Getting ready to upgrade from 2008R2 to 2012R2 and I wanted to perform a bare metal backup to a spare PATA drive that has been used only for holding random files that are several versions old. This PATA drive was originally plugged into the system a while back in order to retrieve a documents folder after that drive's original host mobo died. This may be relevant because the PATA drive was not part of my machine when I installed Server 2008R2; therefore, I don't believe there is any reson for it to hold the mysterious "100MB system reserved partition". I wanted to format and repartition this drive before using it as a target for Server Backup. Well, Windows won't let me do anything to this drive because it has a "system" label (not"system reserved") attached to it!
1. What are the possible causes for this label to be attached? It shows up under Disk Management ("Active, System, Primary Partition") and under DISKPART-->list volume ("system" is noted under the info column). Could Server be recognizing that the drive has a fully booting XP system on it?
2. Why do I not have any other drives/partitions with the "system" label? This concerns me because I don't want to be heavy-handed and break things. My OS and all program files are on a SAS RAID logical drive.
3. In my research leading up to this question, I read a lot about the 100MB system reserved partition. I see much conflicting information about whether 2008R2 even creates/uses this partition at all. When the OS was installed, I only had one HDD, which is the SAS array. How can I find this system reserved partition and confirm that it does not reside on the PATA drive I want to reformat?
4. If there is nothing to be afraid of, how can I simply reformat the whole PATA drive?