Windows came back from the dead

Here is the situation. Originally I installed Zorin alongside Windows Vista with the original hardrive that my computer has (120 gig.) Something happened, and I don't know what, to my boot loader eventually and I kept getting an "Unknown File system" error. The computer would not boot. To remedy the situation I installed a new hardrive, a 250 gig that I took from another computer. I then installed Zorin on that entire hard drive. This computer has room for two hard drives, so I also installed the original hard drive for extra storage space. The nice thing is that even though I couldn't access Windows, I can still access all of the old files that I had. That was until I ran a software update on Zorin and now both Windows, and the other Zorin install that I did on the other hard drive are boot options, and they actually work. Has anyone else ever heard of something like this happening?
This isn't necessarily a problem, but I honestly don't see the point in having Windows right now. I have to deal with it enough at work and school, why deal with it at home as well?
I would like to have this Zorin install take over the other hard drivel. Is there a way to use the partition editor to accomplish that?

Hi,

format the other drive completely but make sure it doesn't have the bootloader on it; otherwise you won't be able to boot anything afterwards!.

Probably there was a problem with your boot loader (and not with windows).
So, after the update of Zorin, the grub loader was updated and "discovered" your windows entry, and placed it as an boot option.

I don't believe that my boot loader for the current install is on the other hard drive. When I installed Zorin there was only one hard drive on this computer. I'll see if I can take some time this weekend to extract what files I want to keep from the old 120 Gig hard drive and try to format it this weekend. I don't think I'll fill up my total 370 Gig too quickly, but I have found a TON of great and free software for Linux and every time I add something to this computer it, of course is taking up more hard drive space. Is there a specific format file system to use? A friend of mine was saying that there is a file system that both Windows and Linux can read and a file system that only Linux can read and that Gparted can format it either way... or something to that extent.

Hi,

for a big drive using both Linux and Windows, use NTFS, this is working on the assumption that you will have files over 4GB in size, if they are only smaller files (files less than 4GB), use FAT32.

See the partition guide and view the other links therein.

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