How do I delete Windows?

[treeroy]

I installed a new SSD and cloned my old hard drive over so now windows is booting from the SSD. To free up space on my old drive - how do I delete Windows from it? (SHould I?) Do I literally just highlight all the Windows files and bin them?

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can delete all the windows files if you want.

 

You canl also just format the drive.

[BiscuitMassacre]

2 minutes ago, treeroy said:

I installed a new SSD and cloned my old hard drive over so now windows is booting from the SSD. To free up space on my old drive - how do I delete Windows from it? (SHould I?) Do I literally just highlight all the Windows files and bin them?

Best way to is copy all files that you want to keep on the HDD to another storage device and re format it. Also run CrystalDiskMark on the 1GiB setting and tell me what speeds you get on your SSD. From my experience, cloning slows the drive down and you should clean format.

[pwn_intended]

2 minutes ago, BiscuitMassacre said:

From my experience, cloning slows the drive down and you should clean format.

Cloning shouldn't slow down the drive access speed. It may slow windows down because it isn't optimized for an SSD (along with wanting to de-frag it instead of perform TRIM), but the actual throughput when moving files and benchmarking it should remain unaffected.

My understanding is that Windows 10 behaves better than 7 in this regard. Buy doing a clean install is always the recommended option.

[superducky94]

I'd probably do something like WInDIrStat to look through all the files and delete the windows ones, but a clean format is a better solution. I'm just kinda lazy most of the time with my personal data.

[BiscuitMassacre]

Just now, pwn_intended said:

Cloning shouldn't slow down the drive access speed. It may slow windows down because it isn't optimized for an SSD (along with wanting to de-frag it instead of perform TRIM), but the actual throughput when moving files and benchmarking it should remain unaffected.

My understanding is that Windows 10 behaves better than 7 in this regard. Buy doing a clean install is always the recommended option.

I dont' know what to say to that. It slowed down my Samsung 850 Evo by like 200MBS.

[treeroy]

8 minutes ago, BiscuitMassacre said:

Best way to is copy all files that you want to keep on the HDD to another storage device and re format it. Also run CrystalDiskMark on the 1GiB setting and tell me what speeds you get on your SSD. From my experience, cloning slows the drive down and you should clean format.

 

This is a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB

[Litargirio]

Don't listen to these chaps telling you to format it, because there will be small Windows partitions left over on the drive that you can't delete by normal means, so simply formatting will do you no good.

 

What you have to do instead is to clean the drive, which will erase anything and everything on it.

 

Erasing a disk is a very easy procedure and only requires you to type a few commands into the command prompt; here's a very nice guide with pictures form Seagate's website:

 

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/005929en

[superducky94]

2 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

Don't listen to these chaps telling you to format it, because there will be small Windows partitions left over on the drive that you can't delete by normal means, so simply formatting will do you no good.

 

What you have to do instead is to clean the drive, which will erase anything and everything on it.

 

Erasing a disk is a very easy procedure and only requires you to type a few commands into the command prompt; here's a very nice guide with pictures form Seagate's website:

 

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/005929en

Does clean format =/= this? Because that's what I meant when I said it. Granted I also said I usually just manually delete, because I'm lazy lol

[Litargirio]

15 minutes ago, superducky94 said:

Does clean format =/= this? Because that's what I meant when I said it. Granted I also said I usually just manually delete, because I'm lazy lol

What did you mean by clean format?

[BiscuitMassacre]

2 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

What did you mean by clean format?

Formatting is better than cleaning. Cleaning just wipes the current partitions. Formatting deletes all partitions and 're-formats' them.

[Litargirio]

Just now, BiscuitMassacre said:

Formatting is better than cleaning. Cleaning just wipes the current partitions. Formatting deletes all partitions and 're-formats' them.

How would you format a drive as a whole? AFAIK you can only format one partition at a time.

[BiscuitMassacre]

1 minute ago, Litargirio said:

How would you format a drive as a whole? AFAIK you can only format one partition at a time.

Its easier. 

[Litargirio]

Just now, BiscuitMassacre said:

Its easier. 

how do you do it

[BiscuitMassacre]

1 minute ago, Litargirio said:

how do you do it

its a diskpart command. I forget. Pretty simple tho.

[BiscuitMassacre]

1 hour ago, treeroy said:

 

This is a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB

That is pretty good. Get the Samsung Magician tool for 1500+ speeds. Its pretty sick.

 

If you don't have a whole lot of stuff on your HDD just copy it over and find a way to delete all partitions and merge them into one. (this will wipe all data) So you should have 1, disk, 1, partition, and 1 volume. I am not expert on how to do this tho. If you do have a lot of data, just delete the windows folders as suggested. 

[treeroy]

Just now, BiscuitMassacre said:

That is pretty good. Get the Samsung Magician tool for 1500+ speeds. Its pretty sick.

 

If you don't have a whole lot of stuff on your HDD just copy it over and find a way to delete all partitions and merge them into one. (this will wipe all data) So you should have 1, disk, 1, partition, and 1 volume. I am not expert on how to do this tho. If you do have a lot of data, just delete the windows folders as suggested. 

well the cloner copied absolutely everything to my SSD, so I have an entire copy of the drive. i.e. I could erase everything on the HDD, and then simply move back what I want from the SSD?

[BiscuitMassacre]

Just now, treeroy said:

well the cloner copied absolutely everything to my SSD, so I have an entire copy of the drive. i.e. I could erase everything on the HDD, and then simply move back what I want from the SSD?

Exactly. Its the best solution. Watch this video on how to setup your HDD.

 

[Sauron]

Ideally you should format the disk but if you don't care you can just delete the "heavy" windows folders.

[asand1]

Unplug SSD, boot from DBAN CD or USB and wipe.

[treeroy]

I just ran Magician's benchmark and comparing it against the advertised specs:

 

Seq read: 515/540 (95.4%)

Seq write: 478/520 (91.9%)

4K read: 93000/97000 (95.9%)

4K write: 84400/88000 (95.9%)

 

Pretty happy with that performance!

[Litargirio]

3 minutes ago, asand1 said:

Unplug SSD, boot from DBAN CD or USB and wipe.

Troll much?

[asand1]

3 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

Troll much?

How do you mean? You uplug the SSD so there's no accidental wipe of it. Then use Dban to do a complete wipe of the HDD. This is how I do it myself. If you have important files on the HDD you can back them up to another storage device or I suppose you could make a new partition, move your files there, and format the old partition?

 

He wasn't very clear as to how much of the HDD he wants cleared.

[asand1]

6 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

Troll much?

Troll accusations are against LTT policies, be careful.

[Litargirio]

@asand1 Sorry I have this bad habit of not reading posts thoroughly before replying and thought you meant that he should nuke his SSD, my bad.