Get rid of Windows ME on secondary hard drive

[needhelp]

I installed XP on one of my computers on a new (second hand) hard drive and installed the old hard drive as a primary slave. The old drive still has windows ME installed on it and I would like to get rid of it because it is taking up too much space on the drive.
How do I go about this, do I just delete the windows folder from the old drive or is there someway to uninstall it totally. Or should I format the drive
At present both drives have an active partition. but I only want the second hard drive for storage for my files and applications.
thanks guys

[jamesrpm]

Format it and start fresh

[needhelp]

Thanks, how do I go about formatting this drive from xp. can I do it from "my computer" by right clicking on the drive icon and choosing "format" or is there a better way to do it.

[jamesrpm]

That is how I'd do it.

[Mesaeus]

No need to format it. Just delete the Windows and "Program Files" directories and you're done. There's a few system files like io.sys and msdos.sys remaining hidden in the root directory but you can ignore that. In any case you'll probably also have to delete the Windows Me line in boot.ini on the master drive, otherwise you'll still get the boot menu even when you reformat the slave drive..

[needhelp]

Thanks guys, Mesaeus you say to just delete the windows and program files directories. That sounds good, Just a couple of questions, I will still have two hard drives on the computer with active partitions on them, Is there any problem with that?
Is it necessary to delete the active partition on the second hard drive? If so, how do I go about that without formatting it.

[Mesaeus]

No, there shouldn't be any problem. The active partition on a hard disk is simply that primary partition (hard drives can have multiple primary partitions) that is marked to boot. Each hard drive can contain one, it simply means that if you'd try to boot from the second (ex-Windows Me) hard disk, the bios would try that partiton before giving up due to not a valid OS being present.

Deleting the Windows and "Program Files" directories is all you have to do.