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Invisible partition.

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9 replies

by jardinier

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I have a 3 GB HD which shows only one partition of 500 MB under fdisk. Will a low-level format remove the invisible partion(s) and allow me to access the full 3 GB?

9 replies

by kjpa

There are a couple of things here:

1) Are you sure that there are invisible partitions. Meaning is the other 2.5 GB just unallocated.

2) If there is another partition, was is created with a different formation NTFS or Linux? Should be able to delete the partition that FDisk can not read. Once more option would to run fdisk /mbr.

Hope this helps.

by jardinier

I am keeping the question open, as it does not cover some information which I did not include in the original question. I purchased the 3 GB HD second hand and it showed a secondary partition. However as I did not know the volume label of the partition (as it was not installed in a computer so that I could not read it) I just pressed Enter to delete the secondary partition, which of cause made it invisible. I suspect the HD was sold (at a good price) because the original user did not know how to use the second partition, which was more than likey created with fdisk. So I will rephrase the question: if the now invisible partition was in fact created with fdisk, will a low-level format delete it? I have not yet had an opportunity to try fdisk/mbr.

by bohicam1

Formatting will not delete a partition. However, using the FDISK utility from a win98 boot disk, you can remove a "non-dos" partition.
How old is the system that you are trying to install this drive in? If it is too old, perhaps there is a limitation on the bios that prevents you from seeing more than 500MB's.
Alternatively you can use a utility that will wipe a drive clean. I use "clearhdd" which you can do a search for. It will write a drive clean to factory shipped standards.
Good luck!
Mike

by jdlp

have you checked to see if your hard drive is Large-Disk enabled, if not this can limit hard-drive space to between 500Mb and 750Mb, this is an option, when you first start FDisk, also check your Bios

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