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erasing a harddrive

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9 replies

by estela

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is it possible to write-protect a hard drive?

i have tried fdisk, and debug to clear out a hard drive in a laptop and nothing will write to the hard drive. whenever I reboot the laptop, I get a message: save disk disabled.

the hard disk I am trying to format has linux installed, I want to delete linux and install windows, but as I said above, it won't let me. and I don't know anything about linux, no commands, troubleshooting, nothing. I just want to uninstall linux, and install dos/windows on the harddrive, but for some reason i can't.

any suggestions?

thanks.

-estela

9 replies

by rob miners

You were on the right track with Fdisk. Run it again and delete the Non Dos Partition. Recreate your Partition and install the OS.

by estela

Thanks Bizzo,

DBAN worked great! Now I can't get the OS installed.

Any suggestions?

by older mycroft

Other than "I can't get the OS installed".

Can you be more specific?

by rob miners

Now what you have is a Hard Drive without a Partition. Use fdisk to create the Primary Partition and mark it as Active. If you are installing windows 98 you will have to format the Drive before you can install the OS. XP should pick up the Drive with or without the Partition. A link to some reading.

http://www.pcguide.com/proc/setup/hdd-c.html

by estela

okay...so do I partition the disk then format, or format then partition?

thanks again

by rob miners

You will have to create the Partition first and then Format.

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