Hard Drive won't FDISK

[Guest_imported]

Hi,

I bought a hard drive for my laptop second-hand the other day. The hard drive currently has Linux installed on it. I just want to kill the drive via FDISK and reformat so I booted up from a DOS boot disk, but FDISK appears to be jammed. If I use option 4 to display partition information it tells me that I have a small primary DOS partition, plus tjhe rest of the disk is taken up with an Extended partition. So I am trying to delete the Extended partition but the system just says I can't because I have a "Logical drive defined" ... when I go into Logical drives and try and delete, FDISK just says "NO LOGICAL DRIVES TO DELETE" ??? I am utterly baffled by this and there is nothing I can do in FDISK at all to fix. Does anyone have any other suggestions or maybe no of any other partition tool I could use to get rid of the existing Disk drive setup?

Many thanks,
CatFunt

 

[RachelD]

when you run fdisk, type fdisk /mbr to clear the master boot record.
then run just fdisk and you should be able to see non-DOS drives. Delete and repartition as usual.

 

[PCSupport]

The FDisk program inside Linux can be used to remove a Linux partition. It is very handy and works great.

Or you can follow these steps:

1. Start your computer with the Linux setup floppy disk, type fdisk at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

NOTE: For help using the Fdisk tool, type m at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

2. Type p at the command prompt, and then press ENTER to display partition information. The first item listed is hard disk 1, partition 1 information, and the second item listed is hard disk 1, partition 2 information.

3. Type d at the command prompt, and then press ENTER. You are then prompted for the partition number you want to delete. Type 1, and then press ENTER to delete partition number 1. Repeat this step until all the partitions have been deleted.

4. Type w, and then press ENTER to write this information to the partition table. Some error messages may be generated as information is written to the partition table, but they should not be significant at this point because the next step is to restart the computer and then install the new operating system.

5. Type q at the command prompt, and then press ENTER to quit the Fdisk tool.

6. Insert either a bootable floppy disk or a bootable CD-ROM for the Windows operating system on your computer, and then press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to restart your computer.

7.Install Windows. Follow the installation instructions for the Windows operating system you want to install on your computer. The installation process assists you with creating the appropriate partitions on your computer.

Any further questions, feel free to stop by

http://pctechforums.com

PCguy

 

[Cougar01]

You might also try to find a version of DOS 6.22 and format and install it. Then you will be able to use a regular bootable floppy to fdisk.

email Cougar_01@hotmail.com

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks for all your suggestions ... that certtainly gives me some options. I will have to repair in DOS as opposeds to Linux ass the Linux installation is corrupt. Thanks again to eveeryone who took the time to reply ... I really appreciate your help

Catfunt