Windows 7 System Reserved Partition in the way of RAID Mirror Array

[Adam Wardell]

Hello, I am a student working for a university physics lab, and we have a worthless IT guy, so I'm pretty much on my own to deal with this.

I recently built a computer for my boss with two hard drives for which we want to set up a RAID Mirror Array. After putting the parts together, my boss managed to get our IT guy to install Windows 7 on the machine. This was a one-in-a-million occasion, as our IT guy is impossible to get a hold of, never in his office, and just generally avoids work. He said that he would set up a RAID array on the computer, but instead he just set one hard drive to back up to the other every day at noon, which leaves me to try to set up the hard drives correctly.

I've been following the tutorial here: How to Create a Software RAID Array in Windows 7 - How-To Geek and got to the step where I would right-click on the unallocated space and click "New Mirrored Volume..." However, I can't do this because even though I've deallocated most of the space on the disk, it still has a System Reserved 100MB NTFS partition which I can't do anything about: Link Removed due to 404 Error

Is there any way I can deal with this other than reformatting the hard drives and reinstalling Windows 7? I don't have the disks, and our IT guy is so difficult to get to do anything, that could take weeks. Thank you for any help.

 

[patcooke]

The partition could have been avoided completely by formatting the drive before installation and reinstalling would still be the easiest way but removal can be done - there is a complete guide here:

System Reserved Partition - Delete - Windows 7 Forums

In the absence of an install disk you will need a bootable repair disk for which you can download an image here:

Windows 7 Repair and Recovery CD Download | The NeoSmart Files

 

[catilley1092]

I have those downloads, from that site (NeoSmart Files), but they're no longer free.

The best bet would be either to burn a repair disk, the option is located in the Backup & Restore center, or to download a copy of the exact Windows 7 install from here:

Download Retail Windows 7 ISO from Official Website | Windows7hacker

Note that the original Windows 7 iso files are here (pre-SP1) as well as the SP1 disks that are the only choices available from many etailers. Glad that I ran across this.

It's best to keep on hand the original install disk for your install anyway, unless you prefer SP1 already there. It'll save a lot of updating time if a re-install is needed. Some users, but not many, has had issues with SP1. But for the most part, the bugs has been worked out.

Cat