Windows 10: I want to format both my ssd and hdd and I need help.

So I have a samsung 250gb ssd (C and a hdd (E. My ssd contains windows on it along with some programs and my hdd has mostly games and programs. I want to format both of them, but I am unable to do it in Disk Managment. For both of them the format button is greyed out. How do I format both of them without damaging the SSD?

:)

 

Windows 10 can not optimize HDD, says it is a SSD Help

Hi Steve,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Community.

Appreciate your efforts to work on this issue.

• Does the BIOS recognizes the disk as HDD or SSD?
  

Suggest you to set the Optimize Drives Service to start automatically from the services window to check if that helps.

1. Open the run window, type ‘services.msc’ and press Enter.
   
2. Search for Optimize Drives Service and select the start-up type as automatic. Also ensure to start the service.
   

If you have set SATA controller to AHCI mode for Solid State Drive, in Device Manager it would show as SATA hard disk.

Follow these steps:

1. Click start, type “Defragment” and click “Defragment and Optimize your drives”.
   
2. On the “Defragment and Optimize your drives” window. Make sure that your SSD is categorized as an SSD.
   
3. If it’s not, then you can set it as a SSD on your bios. This way, you don’t have to exclude your SSD or disable any scheduled defragmentation.
   

Disclaimer: Modifying BIOS/ complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring
of BIOS/CMOS settings can be solved. Modifications of the settings are at your own risk.

Hope this helps.

Let us know if you got the help you needed.

Regards,

Srimadhwa B

Microsoft Community-Moderator

 

Help, cant create windows image

Hello there, @fullinfusion!

It seems like some sort of an OS confusion has happened with your secondary WD Black and I'm sorry to hear about that. *Frown
Maybe re-formatting it would help indeed as the community already mentioned. I'd suggest to take a look at this step-by-step how to partition and format an HDD: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=PYCoid
Keep in mind that this will wipe clean the drive, so you should backup all important data from the drive somewhere else.
I noticed from the screenshots that your HDD appears as Disk 0, this means that it's plugged in the primary SATA port where the SSD (as an OS drive) should be. Actually it is possible that because of this Windows cannot create the image there. Swap the ports of the SSD and the HDD, this might help as well.

Keep me posted. Hope this helped! *Smile
SuperSoph_WD

 

SSD for new Windows, keeping files and programs on HDD

Both options you gave concern re-installing applications.



Option I suggest: if the space taken up (used) on your current hard disk drive is LESS than the the space you will have available on your new SSD (formatted size), utilize some third party partitioning tool to shrink the partition to minimal size (under
the size of the SSD) and then use another tool to make an image of that partition or clone that partition onto the SSD and then take out the HDD and see if everything is working properly on your SSD. Once you have determined that, if you want the extra space
the HDD will grant you, put it back in and format it /use it.