Installing a Windows partition on Mac HD - dual boot in short My current HD in my MBP is partitioned into 4 and all of them uses the Journaled file system of OS X. I plan to wipe out one logical drive so that I can dedicate it to a Windows OS (version 7/8). I don't want to boot Windows in a virtualized environment but rather boot up on its own so that I can make use of my MBPs hardware.

I recently tried Boot Camp Assistant but it wouldn't format a single partition because all of them have been supporting OS X's file system. 

How do I approach this? Is there some sort of software that will allow me to manipulate the drives and then allow me to painlessly install Windows without the hassle I encountered while using Boot Camp Assistant.

My best bet is to backup all the files I have in my other 3 partitions and then delete them so that I can give way to installing a new partition fit for Windows. I'm still adamant on experimenting because of the dangers I might encounter, say for example I might mess up my Master Boot Record and end up in frustration.

In short, this is dual-boot question - only with the difficulty imposed by Boot Camp, so I'm just looking for other alternatives/solutions on how to approach it.
If you have a bootable copy of the recent OS you can boot from that and instead of using the installer go to the menu and select Disk Utility. That will let you delete partitions at will.

Alternatively you can boot into Recovery Mode (Command-R during boot, if I recall correctly) and that will also have Disk Utility available to you.