BleepingComputer.com: Reformatting, Deleting And Recreating Partitions With Fdisk?

Hi

I want to give my external HD another reformat (just to keep things in order) and I was wonderin if it would be possible to do this using the /fdisk command?

Also, the disk has 3 partitions but I want to delete them, have the drive unformatted and repartition. Is this possible with /fdisk or do I need another program if I want to format a drive that isnt a fixed internal drive?

Thank you

ps. I'm using Windows ME

Teenage.Zombiee, on Oct 6 2008, 08:39 AM, said:

You should be able to use Fdisk on the drive, have you tried it?

Run: Fdisk e: or what ever the drive letter is.

If it runs then just delete all partitions. You may have to do a restart. Run Fdisk again and setup a primary DOS partition if you just want to use all the drive as one. Then just Format it Run: Format e:

You can use FDisk for creating, adding, removing partitions. I dont know if fdisk can be used for formatting a hard disk. Maybe the new partitions are auto-formatted. You can always use the format command for that. I personally use Seagate Disk Manager bootable CD.

Here is an external PDF link for formatting external hard disk drives in Win98 and me using fdisk:

http://www.macpower.com.tw/files/articles/format.pdf

Romeo29, on Oct 6 2008, 12:51 PM, said:

No you can't use Fdisk to format a drive.

Hi everyone

Last night I bleeped my computer. I used swissknife to format my external HD
Then it ended up bleeping my C: drive.
I was sooo ****ING PISSED. for two reasons:

I backed up my external drive and formatted it, so everything on it was gone
I backed it up to C: then everything ws gone.

I tried reistalling ME but it said the drive had bad clusters and it gave me the option to fix them. I must have fixed 2000 of them before trying something else.
I found an XP disc
I tried installing that to the computer. it didnt work (I tried keeping the drive as it was) Then I chose to quick format to NTFS
- PROBLEM SOLVED :D

Except... ive lost everything.
Meh, cant win em all

My advice to EVERYONE is to not play around with swissknife. Its powerful and has the potential to destroy everything if you don't know what your doing.
GRR.

Teenage.Zombiee, on Oct 7 2008, 05:53 AM, said:

You should have tried Fdisk first.

Keithuk, on Oct 6 2008, 03:41 PM, said:

I know you cannot use FDisk to format. But certain partitioning softwares, auto-format the partitions after creating them, for example, Seagate Disk Manager. So I was saying that I had no idea that FDisk does that too or not. Sorry for confusing.

Teenage.Zombiee, on Oct 6 2008, 11:53 PM, said:

Same is true for all the partitioning software out there. I suggest the following safety precuations efore you partition:

1. Best of all use a bootable CD/Disk to partition hard disks. Stay away from partitioning softwares which require them to be installed first. You can use parted from any Live Linux cd. Or you can download softwares like Seagate Disk Manager bootable ISO for free.

2. Disconnect the drives you dont want to accidently destroy. In the partitioning software you have to select the hard disk to be partitioned. It may be possible you accidently choose the wrong disk.

3. Backup your important data on a USB pen drive(s) rather than an existing hard disk.

I hope you find my suggestion useful. I expect others to add their suggestions as well for the benefit of the Bleeping community.

Keithuk, on Oct 7 2008, 09:13 PM, said:

Well I was impatient and decided to use swissknife...

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. Ugh, in the time I used Windows ME (I have XP again) I have gained soo much more knowledge... Whether it be better, or for worse.

Wish you good luck