No, you haven't wiped your entire C drive yet.
No, you haven't wiped your entire C drive yet.
I've spent hours trying to prepare an old hard drive, but it kept refusing due to permission issues. It would warn me I didn't have access, prevent wiping, and even after deleting everything in the CMD window on admin, it still wouldn't let me format. Not even when using the Disk Part manager in CMD. A Reddit suggestion helped—run the command prompt in Windows Advanced Startup mode (the blue screen with troubleshoot options), which loads first before Windows checks. That worked! I opened cmd and used diskpart to clean up disk 1, and it finally succeeded. I restarted and was able to create a new partition in Disk Part Manager, restoring normal use.
However, now it's telling me no boot media is selected, so I'm rebooting again to enter the Disk Part Manager and set up a new drive. It's still asking what to do next. I spent about five hours trying this drive—500GB HDD, 1TB NVMe SSDs, and even after deleting my C drive (which I didn't realize I had done), it still showed up as the boot option.
I'm really frustrated because I have six drives for a reason. The C drive is just the OS installation media, and changing the install directory isn’t allowed. I disabled all other drives except the NVMe SSD, but it’s still stuck in that setup. I deleted my C drive accidentally? That’s not ideal, but I’m okay with it. I have six hard drives for a reason. If I hadn’t removed the C drive, I wouldn’t be facing this issue.
This whole process took me until 3:30 AM in New York, and I had to work until 6 AM. It’s taking forever to get everything back on track. I’m just mad it’s so slow and annoying.
It seems like the boot sector for disk 0 was saved on disk 1. This explains why Windows blocked deleting the volume from disk 1—it realized that removing it would make your PC unusable. In reality, all your files remain on the drive, but without a bootloader you can't open them.
Due to my intense caution, I always disconnect other drives when formatting or experimenting with them. I don’t rely on the operating system to prevent errors. Still, if the drive is wiped and you’re looking for your data, Recuva can be a powerful solution. It performs thorough scans and often recovers files even after a format, provided you avoid overwriting them. Hope this assists you in retrieving your files!
I don’t have another desktop here. Just a few laptops. Sometimes I pull out a working HDD from a laptop, install it on the desktop, adjust the boot priority so I can start the OS, download an app, and it feels like a lot of trouble. Still, I’ll remember that for later. I’m searching for a good program to recover deleted files. Thanks!
I'm not sure why the boot loader appeared on that HDD. It seems like a NVMe SSD is connected, and I didn't assign a drive letter during setup. After changing the boot letter to I, I was able to start using it. The PC worked fine without it before, so it's unclear what caused this change. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I also handle this task. Recently, I upgraded a machine from version 7 to 10 and, due to caution, created two backups of the original 7 setup just in case the new 10 installation failed. I also use EASUS as an alternative recovery method. From your earlier comment, it seems the drive you were trying to format was likely the OS disk, and without the operating system running, formatting the OS disk became the only option without interruption. I hadn’t thought anyone might confuse their Windows install for a blank drive, since the installation media includes a built-in warning about which drives have Windows set up.
Windows always sets the bootloader on the first drive it detects, regardless of which one you chose during setup. For your NVMe, you can set up a new bootloader using these guidelines: https://www.tenforums.com/installation-u...post698505
That's a great observation! Classic Windows techniques are still widely used today.
Sounds logical. It functions as a bootloader and can support various systems. Windows relies on the current one, presuming you're already using it. Having several bootloaders isn't practical.
I didn't realize that! It's really absurd! I ended up reinstalling Windows last night, so now I spend days or weeks restoring my setup. UGH! I unplugged all six drives except the NVMe SSD during installation. Does this mean the bootloader will automatically use the NVMe SSD by default?