Reformat an external, previously used for bootstrapping

richpodraza · 11-03-2009, 07:54 AM

Hi all,

I have a WD external USB hard drive which I need to reformat to be usable. The problem is that I previously used it to bootstrap a Leopard installation so it currently only has a MBR and no Volume Record, so it won't mount as a drive when I plug it into my laptop at work (an XP machine). At least I think that is what's going on...it will show up in Device Manager as WD 2500JB External USB Device, and when I go to properties it is enabled and "working properly," and when I go to the Volumes tab and click Populate, it says Disk 1, Type: Basic, Status: Online, Partition Style: MBR, Capacity: 250gigs, unallocated space: 0 MB, Reserved space: 0 MB. I can eject the disk fine and all without any errors but it just never shows up as a volume (i.e. F:\ or whatever).

I am now done with that Leopard installation so I want to reformat this entire drive to a regular NTFS drive. Is there a way I can do it in Windows? I would prefer not to have to boot into a special recovery mode, etc.

Thanks!

**raptor_pa** · 11-03-2009, 09:24 AM

Try deleting the partition thru disk management. If that fails, zero wipe the disk with killdisk or diskwipe

richpodraza · 11-03-2009, 10:53 AM

Thanks for the suggestions. Disk Management and DiskWipe were not able to do much, but I eventually used KillDisk to write zeros to the drive. I didn't do the entire thing as that would have taken 4 hours, but I did enough to basically put it in an unknown state, which allowed Disk Management to be able to reformat it.

11-03-2009, 07:54 AM	#1 (permalink)
richpodraza Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 9 OS: WinXP/MacOS Snow Leopard	Reformat an external, previously used for bootstrapping Hi all, I have a WD external USB hard drive which I need to reformat to be usable. The problem is that I previously used it to bootstrap a Leopard installation so it currently only has a MBR and no Volume Record, so it won't mount as a drive when I plug it into my laptop at work (an XP machine). At least I think that is what's going on...it will show up in Device Manager as WD 2500JB External USB Device, and when I go to properties it is enabled and "working properly," and when I go to the Volumes tab and click Populate, it says Disk 1, Type: Basic, Status: Online, Partition Style: MBR, Capacity: 250gigs, unallocated space: 0 MB, Reserved space: 0 MB. I can eject the disk fine and all without any errors but it just never shows up as a volume (i.e. F:\ or whatever). I am now done with that Leopard installation so I want to reformat this entire drive to a regular NTFS drive. Is there a way I can do it in Windows? I would prefer not to have to boot into a special recovery mode, etc. Thanks!

11-03-2009, 09:24 AM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,933 OS: XP	Re: Reformat an external, previously used for bootstrapping Try deleting the partition thru disk management. If that fails, zero wipe the disk with killdisk or diskwipe __________________

11-03-2009, 10:53 AM	#3 (permalink)
richpodraza Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 9 OS: WinXP/MacOS Snow Leopard	Re: Reformat an external, previously used for bootstrapping Thanks for the suggestions. Disk Management and DiskWipe were not able to do much, but I eventually used KillDisk to write zeros to the drive. I didn't do the entire thing as that would have taken 4 hours, but I did enough to basically put it in an unknown state, which allowed Disk Management to be able to reformat it.