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Reformatting

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by swathingscientist

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I'd be interested in knowing how,when you think a partition has been deleted,the drive number goes away but partition doesn't.Should be showing 120 G but still at 80 G.Unable to find what should thus still be there as far as the data.
Recommended route to take to wipe and reformat this drive.It is only a slave and now useless since new HD installed,up and running.
Thx

8 replies

by Former member

Backup section on your hdd, if you have a look in the "disk management" you will find out. It might just show as "Unformatted" or something similar.

Please post back if you have anymore problems or questions.

by dev_santana

I agree wif Peconet.
It could be still unformatted.
format it & should be fine.
have a shot let us know.

by swathingscientist

I have updated my entire CPU case with all the latest for 2008.Including a Intel Core Duo.
I kept the old drive just so I could get what programming I wanted off it.Now--as it is a seperate drive altogether(slave)what I want to do is wipe it clean and have it reformatted so can use it for a different OS.
Just want the proper procedure to do same safely.My thanks for responses.

by oh smeg

Download a Copy of Boot & Nuke from here

http://tinyurl.com/4rfur

Make up a Bootable Disc of your choice and remove the Master Drive and any other Slave Drives from this computer and boot off the Boot Disc that you have made. When you get the A Prompt type in [b]Nuke 0[/b] and follow the directions to delete everything on the drive.

If you don't want to disconnect the Master Drive and any other that you may have installed in this computer you first need to identify what the Physical Number of the Drive is so a Primary Master is Drive 0, Primary Slave is Drive 1, a Secondary Master is Drive 2 and a Secondary Slave s Drive 3.

If you are using a SATA Drive it gets a bit harder as the SATA Drives are listed after the IDE Drives. So it's easier to just disconnect the drives as if you make a mistake you will not be able to recover your Data.

Col

by oh smeg

So when you delete that partition it disappears but without further action it doesn't appear as a different drive letter or Drive Space. It just sits there not being used.

If you want to get this space back you have a couple of options depending on how many Partitions are on the HDD in question.

If there where more than 2 you can use a wiping utility like Boot & Nuke to zero the entire drive and then format it after the wiping process has been completed.

http://tinyurl.com/4rfur

The other option is to use a Partition Manager like Partition Magic to resize the Partition. You can make the partition either larger or smaller depending on what you need.

But with either of these utilities you need to make sure that you have a [b]Solid Current Backup[/b] before doing anything or you may delete/alter the wrong thing and need to reload the system.

Col

by swathingscientist

Have it downloaded but not as yet installed.My slave drive which I wish to wipe clean,reformat is Drive D but if I disconnect my main Drive C,I seriously doubt if this would allow sytem to boot??.I suppose I could just go in and disconnect drive D so it takes up no memory,not involved in scans from MS or Secunia.I just ran my Belarc Advisor again and see where your getting Drive 1 and Drive 0 from.
New drive:WDC WD1600AAJS-08PSAO-160.04 G
Slave(drive 0)Samsung SV1204H-120.06 G
Know I deleted the partition on Drive 0 but seems like physically,it's still there as only shows as (d(NTFS on drive 0)83.89 G,70.64 Freespace,should say 120G,??.
Standard floppy disk controller
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 27DF
Intel(R) 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller - 27C0
Primary IDE Channel [Controller] (2x)
Secondary IDE Channel [Controller] (2x).Copy/Paste last bit right off Belarc,any use?.Hang in there if you please and my thanks indeed.

by oh smeg

It works from DOS if you like and doesn't involve the computer booting off any HDD. You can copy this to a Floppy or a CD depending on what you have available to you.

When yo start the computer without a Boot Hard Drive it will look for any Bootable Media and boot off that.

When you delete the Partition it just removes it from the Drive Cain so any other partition on that drive will remain intact. If you have more than 1 Partition on the Drive or had more than 1 Partition depending on how you removed it the drive may still show up the Empty Space divided into how ever many Partitions you had on the Drive Previously.

To get rid off these different size Units on the HDD you need to run something like FDisk in DOS to completely delete the Primary and Extended Partitions. That isn't quite correct in the explanation as I've simplified it down so if you ask someone about this they will say that it's not correct but the aim of the exercise is exactly that way but for slightly different Terminology.

Col

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