ANyone know how to unpartition a hard drive? i want to get rid of it. I really dont see a point in having one.

thanks
Rosh

 

yes, I know how to unpartition a hard drive, but I need more information first. In order to unpartition a hard drive you need to use a utility called Fdisk. By using this command line utility, you will ultimatly destroy any data on the drive? It is unclear if you want this to happen or not?

If you are looking to remove a partition and keep everything in tack, you will have to use a program such as partition magic which is not free. (unless you find a hacked version off the internet) If you go this route, I can help you further, just ask away.

If you want to repartition with data-loss, then boot from a floppy disk into DOS and type fdisk. Use the menu system to delete the partition you want removed, then delete the extended partition (if there is one) then delete the primary partition. After you have removed all partitions, you will have 100% of your drive available to creat a new partition of the entire size of the drive. Use the menu again and select create a primary partition. When it asks, tell it to use 100% of the drive. After you partition it with 100%, you will have to reformat the drive and then re-install your OS.

FDISK CAN AND WILL DELETE EVERYTHING ON THE DRIVE IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFULL, DO THIS ONLY IF YOU PLAN TO RE-INSTALL EVERYTHING Just making this as clear as possible, I don't want to be flamed for you loosing data.

Let me know if you need more help,

DC

 

You da man!!! Thanks a lot for the info. I currently have a 16.8 gig hard drive and I have so much junk on it, it has to be formatted. I am going to buy a new 40-60 gig hard drive this week so I will wait until I get that one, install XP and my drivers, and take whatever I need from my old hard drive out and put it in my new one. Then, I will unpartition my old one so I don't lose any data and then I can clutter it up again .

Thanks again

Rosh

 

If that's the case you can repartition it through windows. Use the "Disk Managment" in XP and you won't have to deal with fdisk. When I wrote my last reply I was treating this as your only hard drive, but if you plan to install XP on a new drive and then reconfigure your old drive, it is much easier to do it through windows.

So, after you install XP on the new drive and copy all your data over, right click on "my computer" in the start menu, go to "manage" and then select "disk managment" From there you can do everything fdisk does. This only works on drives that are not your boot drives, which works out perfect for your computer.

let me know if you need any help with it,

Doug

ps again, even through windows you will loose any data on the drive, so back everything up first before you repartition.

 

just some FYI, format with NTFS to benifit from security and reliability. Just note that any NTFS formated drive is not readable in DOS or through windows 9x unless you install a 3rd party application. I highly recommend NTFS formatting over FAT/FAT32