Calculating Hard Drive space 1

[JCrou82]

I currently have a number of hard drives left from old systems. I was wondering if there is a calculation that will give you the hard drive space. I have cylinder, head and sector information, but I don't have drive space info. I don't want to have to install windows just to get the hard drive space. Can some one help.

Also on some of them i try to reformat and delete the partiontions, and it won't allow me to. Is there a way to completely clear out all the hard drives so that I can reformat and set up my own partitions?

Thanks

 

[diogenes10]

for the size info I would probably try either google searches on the model numbers and/or putting them in a test system with the bios set on auto and see what the computer recognizes them as.

Have you used the fdisk step in repartitioning and reformatting?

 

[JCrou82]

yes i've attempted fdisk and when I select the delete option it won't allow it. I'll try a google search, but i was told that there was a calculation that one could do.

Thanks so far

 

[diogenes10]

http://www.dell.com/us/en/bsd/topics/vectors_1999-hdd.htm

There is a computation mentioned under formatted capacity.

 

[edfair]

CxHxSx512x10^-6.
There are some partitions defined on hard drives that fdisk can not remove. You can use the zero-fill/low level format program from the drive manufacturer to write zeros to the drive and make it usable in most of those occasions.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.