Windows 10: Clean win10 reinstall - C and D drives are interlinked, need to format D drive, how to approach

Hi I am running Windows 10 Pro, I have a bootable Win10 USB, product key, backed up everything but I am left with 1 issue that I'm unsure to manage it.The reason for the reboot is C and D drives are interlinked and causing major issues; blue screens, software errors, losing overall function of apps. I have inlcuded images of the file arrangement between C and D drives.I am not sure in what order I should approach the following tasks:Format D drive - removing the system files Remove D drive - an internal M.2 drive Reinstall Win 10 - on C Drive exclusivelyUpgrade Win 10 > Win 11I'm guessing i

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D drive

Hi,

Based on the details you have provided us, it appears that there might be some corrupted contents on the said partition. We can also consider that this is caused by a virus.

For us to check if a certain virus is hiding your files, kindly follow the steps below:

• Type Command prompt in the search bar.
• Type-in the following command:
  
  attrib -h -r -s /s /d D:\*.*
• Press Enter to execute the command.

If you think that there is nothing important stored in it, then we suggest that you reformat your D drive so that you can use the free space for important files.

You can follow the steps below to start with the process:

• Click on the File Explorer.
• Select This PC.
• Right-click on your D drive, then click on Format.
• Follow the on-screen process to finish formatting the partition.

Let us know how it goes so that we can further assist you.

 

How C and D Drive Work Together

Win10, HP Laptop 128G SSD and 1T HD I'll do my best to describe my question, but it is confusing for me to clearly express it since I am not a geek.

I have a C Drive and a D Drive Both drives contain Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos I set it up so that all new files are saved to D drive in the appropriate folder. Both appear to contain the same files. I read that this is the preferred setup in case I ever need to reformat C Drive and reinstall Win10. I would not lose the files in D Drive in doing a reinstall.

Since both drives contain these same folders, and my SSD (128G) is close to being full, I deleted files contained in the C Drive folders to free up space. I quickly learned that files were deleted in both C and D Drives (and vice versa). Fortunately, I was able to retrieve the files from my Recycle Bin and both drives contain these same files/folders again. (I have backed up my D Drive folders, but have not done an image backup.)



Does this mean that data in C and D Drives will be lost if I reinstall Win10 in C Drive?

Do all the C Drive files in Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos take up space in my SSD?

This is somewhat confusing and any insight as to how and why this works this way would be appreciated.

 

C: and D: drives

I was able to free up the D drive by deleting the Windows 8 from the D drive and creating a restore point on the C drive. The D drive is now free. Thank you for the quick reply.