Help with an old hard drive

[spg SCOTT]

I have just bought a hard drive enclosure for an 80GB hard drive that I have

It works fine but I want to format it, but have a problem,

It is partitioned (with a recovery console I believe) and when I try to format, it appears to keep the partitioning, is there any way to remove this?


Also I am considering trying to boot from it but USB is not availiable in the BIOS, is there any way to add this?

Thanks,

-Scott-

[Pondus]

what about this   

http://download.cnet.com/Active-Kill-Disk-Hard-Drive-Eraser/3000-2092_4-10073508.html   

[Pondus]

from PC world

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,22920-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html

[spg SCOTT]

I tried the program and it didn't even clear the hard drive
I'm going to use the windows format and format them both to NTFS, as the second partition is FAT32

thinking about it, its not really a problem, the partition is only about 10GB

-Scott-

EDIT:Ok so I formatted both partitions and in both there is a hidden folder called 'System Volume Information', Why??
                  It can't be deleted or accessed

                  Any ideas about the BIOS thing or is this not possible?

[Lisandro]

Use Easeus partioner to remove\rebuilt the partitions.
http://www.easeus.com/

[CharleyO]

***

I may be wrong, but I think the only way to add USB boot to the BIOS would be through a flash update of the BIOS. This may or may not be available for your particular version of the BIOS depending on who made it and how old it might be.

Perhaps one of the below links might help you :

http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_bootfromusbstick.php

http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5928902.html

Other helpful links might be found in this ScanDoo/google search results :

http://g.s.scandoo.com/search?hl=en&q=bios+boot+usb&revid=346182321&ei=BtQgSojrH9ONjAfZofG8Bg&sa=X&oi=revisions_inline&resnum=0&ct=broad-revision&cd=6


***

[mkis]

Just a thought.
You could clear the hard drive using a 98SE or ME boot disk (from bootdisk.com).

If your hard drive shows its properties  under fdisk options, then follow instructiions to delete partiions (DOS partition for FAT and non-DOS partition for NTFS). Reboot computer and format in disk management console.

[spg SCOTT]

Use Easeus partioner to remove\rebuilt the partitions.
http://www.easeus.com/

That's exactly what I was looking for, will have a go, thanks Tech



CharleyO,

I think your right, looks to be a bit too far beyond me, I think I'll just use it for backup.
Thanks for the help,


-Scott-

EDIT:just to clarify do I need to leave some space as unallocated or can I just fill it up with the single partition?

[Lisandro]

That's exactly what I was looking for, will have a go, thanks Tech
EDIT:just to clarify do I need to leave some space as unallocated or can I just fill it up with the single partition?

You're welcome. The free version does not offer the rescue/boot CD.
You can use all space available, no need for not allocate it.

[spg SCOTT]

That's exactly what I was looking for, will have a go, thanks Tech
EDIT:just to clarify do I need to leave some space as unallocated or can I just fill it up with the single partition?

You're welcome. The free version does not offer the rescue/boot CD.
You can use all space available, no need for not allocate it.

Ok thanks again, just thought I might have to because it's there on the hard drive and the pc hard drive

-Scott-

[Lisandro]

Ok thanks again, just thought I might have to because it's there on the hard drive and the pc hard drive

Scott, please, run Easeus and post a screenshot of the partitions here. Do not make wrong things or you will lose any data on the partitions. Better post before.

[spg SCOTT]

I was going to delete the small partition and resize the bigger one to fill it up.

The external hard drive (Disk 2) has just been formatted so it has nothing on it anyway, the unallocated space on that totals 7.84MB

The hard drive for the PC (Disk 1 -- I'm not going to touch that ) has unallocated space of 11.44MB

just curius that's all

Also whats the difference between the 'primary' and 'logical'? (does it matter?)

-Scott-

[DavidR]

The very short answer, Primary partitions are bootable, and logical partitions aren't. So if you wanted to install another OS to dual boot then it would have to be on a Primary partition.

On old IDE fat32 formatted Hard Disks you could only have one Primary partition (possibly why it was called primary), the rest had to be logical as far as I'm aware.

More info, http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/structPartitions-c.html.

[spg SCOTT]

The very short answer, Primary partitions are bootable, and logical partitions aren't. So if you wanted to install another OS to dual boot then it would have to be on a Primary partition.

On old IDE fat32 formatted Hard Disks you could only have one Primary partition (possibly why it was called primary), the rest had to be logical as far as I'm aware.

More info, http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/structPartitions-c.html.

Ok thanks DavidR,

I'll leave it as logical then

-Scott-

[DavidR]

You're welcome, I doubt it would hurt to have more primary ones, in case you ever decided to clean one out and dual boot with another OS.