Hardware Computer help?

[Sonia]

I don't like posting help topics all the time, but I really need some help here guys. A couple of months ago, my main hard drive started to act up when I recently installed a new battery. Unfortunately, it just died all together, and would not boot up. It took a while for me to get everything situated on the back up drive, and I found out that I can still explore the other drive from my back up drive, and manually delete most things..... Except for some files, which seem to be important files for that drive's installed OS. (Both have Windows 7. I was given 2 keys for it when I paid for one.)

My problem is this. I would like to keep both drives, but no matter what I do, windows will not allow me to format it, even though I am the administrator. I can't even do it while in safe mode, and with command prompt.

I would greatly appreciate some help. I've searched for weeks on the internet but have found no solution.

 

[Sterling]

If all you need to do is format the hard disk that isn't your main drive, then I'd suggest a partition manager. Particularly this one (the one I use frequently). Try using the free version to format it.

The probable reason Windows won't let you format it is because the other hard drive has an active partition on it. Last time I tried to format something like that, Windows didn't like it either.

 

[Arm73]

I had a similar problem a couple of years ago. I also didn't have access to the HDD trough windows.
And I found e very elegant solution.
I downloaded one of those self booting Linux CD images ( Ubuntu I believe ) and burned it so that my computer could start from the Disc Drive.
It booted straight into Ubuntu, from which I was able to explore the HDD, delete files, format or even create or delete partitions.
After I fixed the problems and backed up everything I wanted, I actually performed a clean Windows installation and I got rid of any problem and my PC worked better then ever.
Hope it helps.

EDIT:

Yeah it's calles Live CD, this is what I used:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD