extended partition problem?

[darkprince]

hello this is really annoying me and i need some serious help please.

I have just purchased a 80gb westernDigital hdd and it has an extended partition which uses up all 76gb's and it cannot be deleted because it says 'it cannot be deleted until logical partitions are deleted' and when i try to delete any logical partitions it says 'no logical partitions defined' oh and by the way this extended partition is not defined as any drive so i cannot store anything on it nor delete it. i can however make a new primary partition which overlaps the extended partition and is about 66gb's big but i need to reinstall linux mandrake 9.0 but its installed on the extra 10gb's on the extended partition which means i cannot get rid of it and it just starts up mandrake when i boot up on 'ide-1'. please help!!!

thanks in advance
ciao

p.s. I am partitioning this hdd in dos' fdisk

 

[jmatt]

Windows doesn't deal with disks over 64gb, without this patch

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q263044&

This patch allows fdisk to "see" larger drives.

 

[wolluf]

what tool(s) are you using to try to remove the extended partition?

If you have no data to save, you could try a binary zero fill (WD should have a utility on their website) to reinitialise the disk. Or delpart (use Google to find it - eg

http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm).

Or

http://www.lpacomputers.telinco.co.uk/PD.zip

(though don't know if that will work on 80GB drive).

 

[darkprince]

hey wollup thanks a lot this worked perfectly and it's now fixed, thanks again for your help

and jmatt thankyou to you aswell it might have worked but im running Windows ME and that patch has no effect on it.

ciao