I have a 2nd drive that I need to reformat so I can clone the C: drive. I've gone into Disk Management, but when I reformat, it tells me that the drive is active (though not primary) and won't reformat it. I tried changing the name where it isn't 'Local Disk' anymore, to no avail. Please advise and Thanks! - Shep

Hey shep, what cloning tool do you plan to use to clone the drive? Only, most cloning tools such as Acronis, will do this for you anyway.

But be careful and make sure that you have not got the disks mixed up, or that Windows isn't using the second drive to boot from. An active partition means at the very least, the first bootable part of the operating system is installed on it. You can test this by simply disconnecting the second drive, and seeing if your able to boot your PC. I'm betting that you won't be able to.

Hi MM, thanks for replying. I have Acronis 10, but for whatever reason, it too, won't act on this drive when i select delete partitions. I unplugged the 2nd drive, still boots fine(gambling can be costly-LOL). I had unplugged my H: drive and used the jumper from it to connect 2nd drive. Like I said, this drive is an old clone(acronis made) of the C: drive. What can I do to make it 'inactive' - maybe that will appease the reformat gods?!?- Shep
Oh yeah, I unplugged it, reboots fine. I used the jumper off my H drive, and so it shows up as H drive when it's plugged in...

How many drives are showing as active? It might help by posting screenshots of disk mangement (instructions on my sig). And how were the drives cloned in the first place? And finally, when using Acronis, are you using the bootable CD version or the Windows version? Always better to work off the bootable CD.

C drive is (system) H drive (clone) shows active. These are the only 2. I've done the Windows version up til now. I thought the bootable cd was just a rescue disk(shows what a noob I must be). I have the true H drive on now, so I can't show ya a shot w/ the clone. But it's how I describe, for certain.
What do I do on the bootable? Thanks bud - Shep

So just H shows as Active? What happens if you disconnect H, can you confirm that C: becomes active? It just sounds to me that this drive is being found first, and booting to it. Since all your registry settings are pointing to your C: drive, the rest of the startup process takes place normally. Not sure if this makes any sense? It may just be the order in which the drives are physically connected.

For the bootable CD, all you do is stick the CD in the drive at startup, and let the PC start with the CD in the drive. You may be prompted if you would like to boot to CD, and you may also need to change the boot order of your devices from within BIOS (normally F2 or [DEL]). Make sure that the CD-ROM has a higher priority over your HDD's. The bootable CD can be used for rescue purposes, but it's also good for when you want to restore to a partition that is in use, since it's not possible to restore to a partition that Windows is using, similar to the problems your experiencing now. When you use the Acronis CD, it looks almost identical and operates the same way as you would use the Windows version.