Windows Force deletion of a partition

[dave_c]

ok someone gimme a hand with this before i rip my eyebrows out (not much hair left)

uninstaled ubuntu which has aparently created a few particians for me :|

reinstalled windows on C

however one of my hardrives is appearing in disk manager as particianed

partician 1 is 457.77Gb
partician 2 is 7.99Gb - AND has "system, active, primary partician"

the system bit means it can be formated back into a single disk. however there are NO files on that Hd on either partician.

im assuming its a remnant of ubuntu

is there a way to force format the disk? there is NOTHING on my entire computer save windows 7 (ult 64) and drivers so lost data isnt an issue.

can anyone help before i have a complete and utter nervous breakdown with this. been at it (and google) for 3 hours.

[MrDomRocks]

in Disk Manager, right click on the hard drive you wish to change the partition, it should show Expand/Shrink/Delete Partition in the list. Delete all Partitions and then format the HDD. This will make it an unpartitioned drive and then partition it as a single drive. You will have to assign a drive letter to use the HDD.

Hope that helps.

[Margon]

I'm not sure you can do above from windows as the drive you are wanting to format is your system drive.

Make a recovery cd from backup and restore, boot that and go into the command prompt and do it all from diskpart.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...=ws.10%29.aspx - that link gives you all the options etc. with diskpart.

edit: just read that it isnt your system disk. If you cant do it from disk management, then you will be able to do it from diskpart, which you can run from a command prompt in windows - no need for recovery CD.

[dave_c]

Originally Posted by MrDomRocks

in Disk Manager, right click on the hard drive you wish to change the partition, it should show Expand/Shrink/Delete Partition in the list. Delete all Partitions and then format the HDD. This will make it an unpartitioned drive and then partition it as a single drive. You will have to assign a drive letter to use the HDD.

Hope that helps.

as the disk has system fils on it it cant be done via the normal method, why would microsoft make life easy?

Originally Posted by Margo Baggins

I'm not sure you can do above from windows as the drive you are wanting to format is your system drive.

Make a recovery cd from backup and restore, boot that and go into the command prompt and do it all from diskpart.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...=ws.10%29.aspx - that link gives you all the options etc. with diskpart.

edit: just read that it isnt your system disk. If you cant do it from disk management, then you will be able to do it from diskpart, which you can run from a command prompt in windows - no need for recovery CD.

tried this but just kept getting an error message saying it could not be deleted as the drive was in use.


SOLUTION:

anyways so i FINALLY figured it out. i put my ubuntu CD back in the drive and loaded it up from disk, then using the disk managment tool in ubuntu i was able to format the drive. meant i had to reinstall windows (not an issue, it was a fresh install anyway) appreciate the help chaps.

[Margon]

Originally Posted by dave_c

as the disk has system fils on it it cant be done via the normal method, why would microsoft make life easy?



tried this but just kept getting an error message saying it could not be deleted as the drive was in use.


SOLUTION:

anyways so i FINALLY figured it out. i put my ubuntu CD back in the drive and loaded it up from disk, then using the disk managment tool in ubuntu i was able to format the drive. meant i had to reinstall windows (not an issue, it was a fresh install anyway) appreciate the help chaps.

oh so it WAS your system drive - yeah you wouldnt have been able to do it from windows environment - would have worked if you had booted from recovery disk, but that is much like what you did with ubuntu disk anyway! glad you got it sorted

[MrDomRocks]

Ahh I see I may have misread the OP. Gratz on getting it all sorted mate!!

[dave_c]

Originally Posted by Margo Baggins

oh so it WAS your system drive - yeah you wouldnt have been able to do it from windows environment - would have worked if you had booted from recovery disk, but that is much like what you did with ubuntu disk anyway! glad you got it sorted

yer it turned out that way. i THOUGHT it was a system file that ubuntu had just hidden somewhere beyond hidden folders. but no, was that wonderful MS again. gotta love em......or go chuck norris on em, one of the two.

[Krikkit]

So, summarise the thread: Install windows, try and delete system partition, assume Microsoft are the stupid ones for not letting you hose an install?

[dave_c]

Originally Posted by Krikkit

So, summarise the thread: Install windows, try and delete system partition, assume Microsoft are the stupid ones for not letting you hose an install?

close,

install windows, windows installs boots files on none windows drive, THEN assume MS are the stupid ones for not even allowing me to see the files that they have installed onto the wrong HDD so i have no idea why i cant format. forcing me to load an alternative OS to format.

try and keep up Krikkit.

[MrDomRocks]

Originally Posted by dave_c

close,

install windows, windows installs boots files on none windows drive, THEN assume MS are the stupid ones for not even allowing me to see the files that they have installed onto the wrong HDD so i have no idea why i cant format. forcing me to load an alternative OS to format.

try and keep up Krikkit.

Which is why it is suggested to disconnect any extra drives when installing OS for that very reason. Though this isn't always the case xD

[Shirty]

I've been caught by a Windows 7 install dumping system files on a random drive once before. I can't for the life of me work out whether that is a bug or by design. I removed the drive for use elsewhere and it rendered the PC unbootable, put it back and found the offending files. I'm lucky I hadn't formatted the drive before I next booted the PC it had come from, or I might have ended up borking that install permanently.

[Margon]

another thing windows will let you do, is install the os onto a dynamic disk, it will then continue after the install reboot to finish the install, it will then never boot again! because you cant boot an os off a dynamic disk. Why it doesnt tell you its a dynamic disk and you are wasting your time installing onto it, I will never know. Really, it should tell you ,and let you change it.

For the record though, I quite like microsoft - and really, it doesnt have that many problems that aren't PICNIC's (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer)

[RichCreedy]

PICNIC's (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer

hehehe, we call that seat and mouse interface

[matt_lumley]

We call it the PEBKAC Error:Problem Exists between keyboard and chair.

[dave_c]

Originally Posted by Margo Baggins

another thing windows will let you do, is install the os onto a dynamic disk, it will then continue after the install reboot to finish the install, it will then never boot again! because you cant boot an os off a dynamic disk. Why it doesnt tell you its a dynamic disk and you are wasting your time installing onto it, I will never know. Really, it should tell you ,and let you change it.

For the record though, I quite like microsoft - and really, it doesnt have that many problems that aren't PICNIC's (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer)

just to be clear, i like windows too, it is at the very least, the lesser of evils. just a few bits and pieces bug me, but then nothing is perfect .

really appreciate the help though guys, thanks for taking the time.

[BLC]

Originally Posted by dave_c

SOLUTION:

anyways so i FINALLY figured it out. i put my ubuntu CD back in the drive and loaded it up from disk, then using the disk managment tool in ubuntu i was able to format the drive. meant i had to reinstall windows (not an issue, it was a fresh install anyway) appreciate the help chaps.

Sorry I didn't get to this sooner, but for future reference (for the OP and others) there is a simpler way around this which negates the need to wipe the disk and completely re-install everything: GParted Live CD/USB.

GParted is a non-destructive on-the-fly disk/partition management tool. You can resize, move, remove, add, etc, partitions on the fly; in most cases this will preserve your existing data - though, of course, if you're deleting a partition you will lose that data...! If you're only resizing or deleting partitions, it's usually pretty quick; moving a partition, or resizing it to the left does take a good while though...

By "resizing it to the left", I mean this: say the partition you want to resize takes up the last part of the disk, like this:

-------|||

And you want it to look like this:

-----|||||

or this

|||||||---

It will take a good while to complete these operations. I recently moved a 350GB partition to the start of the drive and re-sized it to take up the full space (500GB); it took around 4/5 hours to complete the operation, but I didn't lose any data.

I use GParted quite often when I want to install Linux on any of my machines and so far I've never lost any data using it. There is always the chance that something will go wrong (loss of power, random crash/hardware failure, etc); if that does happen mid-way through an operation it will hose your entire partition table, rendering the data useless and leaving your drive needing a complete wipe. Be sure to back up any critical files before doing this.

[Fat Tony]

Acronis Disc Manager trial version allows you to do this sort of thing for 30 days before requiring payment

[Krikkit]

Originally Posted by dave_c

try and keep up Krikkit.

I'm trying my best.