You're right it would accomplish more or less the same thing and I'd normally do it that way, but diskpart is more robust, if you have a corrupt partition on the disk (which we could suspect), Windows may not display it in the UI - then you assume that the drive is blank, whereas clean tells it to -- clean, regardless whether it can interpret the contents or not, removing that potential. Notice sometimes during installation the Windows installation GUI shows you multiple "Unallocated space" under the same disk which is impossible to merge using the UI, even if you try creating partitions and deleting them, it keeps showing you multiple instances of Unallocated space, you have to use diskpart to run clean, and then you see the full block of "Unallocated space".

Another instance of diskpart prevailing over diskmgmt is where someone may create a primary partition on removable media of a size less than the full size of the disk, you cannot expand it using the UI to the full size as the unallocated space sticks at the low amount, even after deleting the volume/partition. Once again you have to run clean.

It may or may not fix the issue, but it's worth a try

Edited by Pipexer (Mon 09-Apr-12 21:07:33)

A "fixmbr" may work but I suspect that all partitions need to be deleted and the disk structure recreated to suit your needs. Even then, it then may require a "repair installation".

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

What I'd try first is to put the disk back in the old computer, and run a diskpart "clean all" on the disk. Make sure you select the right disk!

This will clear all partitions, then when you pop it into the new computer, windows will not try assigning a drive letter because the drive will have no partitions. This might get you by.

Did that, put disk in new PC - still hangs

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

assuming the old PC wasn't running Windows 7.

It is running Win 7 Home Premium (installed by yours truly as a retail upgrade from XP). Have reformatted disk on old PC, about to try in new PC. Hohum.

In reply to a post by andygegg:

..... as a retail upgrade......

I wouldn't recommend OS upgrades under any circumstances. All too often they come back to bite you at a later date.

You might try sticking the HDD in an enclosure, use this free tool http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Partition-Master-Hom... to remove any partitions etc. and reformat as NTFS from the new Win7 machine.

I did this with an old IDE drive that was giving problems: it had partitions, possibly corrupt files, XP on it and wouldn't boot, now it works perfectly as an external drive in an enclosure over usb2.

Doing the same thing with a SATA drive and then using it as an internal, after formatting, should also work assuming the mobo is happy with it...

Are there any options for a "HDD delay"? It may be that the BIOS is slow in recognising the SSD is present and jumping straight to the HDD. Taking the HDD out of the bootable devices list should have the same effect.
What's the make/model of motherboard? Is there a BIOS update available?

If this was the case, Windows wouldn't load at all.

Hello Andy,

I've read through the entire post, and nobody has pointed out that the SATA hard drive your trying to put into your new pc is 6 years old.

6 years ago, SATA drives didn't support the modern/high performance modes which the SATA controllers use these days. Inside your bios, check to see in the advanced menu's for the SATA controller, if you can change it down to either compatability mode or IDE emulations. without that change Windows will just hang because the hard drive doesn't know how to respond.

In doing the above, your compromising the overall performance of your SSD and PC, because it will be the cause of a bottle neck.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

If this was the case, Windows wouldn't load at all.

It would if it was still present on the old disk.