Unwanted Files/Folders on HDD

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JAHall16

Member
Bought a PC a from here a year and a half ago and have two hard drives; an SSD for my operating system and an HDD for storage.
Windows 7 and most of my programs are installed on my SSD, and my HDD should be completely empty except for my Steam game library. However there are a large amount of files and folders on my HDD that have been there since I got the PC. They include folders like 'Program Files', 'Program Files(x86)', and 'Windows'. From what I can tell they have no use; I disabled the drive and restarted the PC and there seemed to be no negative affects. However I cannot simply delete the files because they keep telling me I need TrustedInstaller or Administrators permission. I have even tried to change the ownership and permissions of the files to my user account, but they still won't delete.
Does this mean I will have to format the HDD drive in order to clear it completely? I would rather not do this because I would have to wipe my large 'games' folder (too big to backup). Or am I completely wrong and unlike everyone else I know about I need these files on my HDD? Although I doubt that. And why are all these files on there in the first place?
 
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LFFPicard

Godlike
Those folders are windows folders, I have no idea why they would be on your second drive if your SSD has windows installed on it.
You have mentioned you disabled the drive and it did not effect the PC at all, so the only thing I can think of is they are ghost folders from game installed or programs as usually these like to default to the C:\Program Files folders unless you specifically change them.

What is inside these folders and how much space do they use up? If they are ghost folders they might be mostly empty but due to them being labelled as system folders wont delete, the easy way round that would be to simply set them as hidden in the properties so they are no longer visible. Or you can try deleting them from safe mode in a command prompt.
 
J

JAHall16

Member
They are definitely not ghost folders. All files and folders total about 18GB in size. It seems like it is another install of Windows, but on a different drive. The folders seem to be almost identical to the ones on the SSD, except a few are missing, and there are unique ones. For instance on the HDD there's a folder for AMD and ATi and only have Intel and Nvidia hardware. I'm going to assume everything on the HDD is defunct. Windows wouldn't be installed across two drives would it?

I have decided to not worry too much. I have managed to find a large enough backup drive, so I'm backing up my games folder right now. I'm going to format my HDD, and then I'm going to do a completely clean install of Windows 10 onto my SSD. Unless I hear anything different.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Your HDD has had a Windows system installed on it in the past and the files and folders you see are left over from that installation. This is why you can't delete them, because they are owned by an operating system that's no longer running. Disabling the drive and suffering no issues shows conclusively that these are an old Windows installation and you don't need these files and folders any more.

You could try booting into Safe Mode and see whether you can delete them from there. Failing that try booting the Windows installation DVD, select the repair option, open a command prompt and try deleting them from there. I rather suspect both of these techniques will fail because of ownership issues however. If you have a Linux system on DVD (or if you can download a Linux system and burn it to DVD) you could boot that Linux system and run it off the DVD (so no need to install). You will be able to delete these files and folders from there, or from any other non-Windows system that you can boot.
 
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Lez501

Gold Level Poster
Do you have any means of backing up your steam game files (everyone should have a back-up solution). Once you have them safely backed-up, you could then just delete the partitions on the disk, re-partition it, then copy your backed-up files back to it.
 
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Lez501

Gold Level Poster
JAHall16 said:
I have decided to not worry too much. I have managed to find a large enough backup drive, so I'm backing up my games folder right now. I'm going to format my HDD, and then I'm going to do a completely clean install of Windows 10 onto my SSD. Unless I hear anything different.
Click to expand...

:oops: Missed this bit - well done........
 
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