Thinkpads Forum

I have replaced the hard drives in my TPs and have one old one in a USB enclosure and one in the Ultrabay of my docking station. Can anyone refer me to a "how to" or a tutorial on how to reformat the two old drives to remove the IBM partitions and effectively clean up for use as storage devices? Note: When I try to use Windows XP to format the 20GB drive in the docking station Ultrabay, I get an error message not allowing me to do it.

Go to "Control Panel-->Performance and Maintenance-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management" and click "Disk Management" in the left pane. You should be able to select the appropriate drive in the right pane, right click and delete any partitions you choose. You can then repeat the process to create partitions and format the drives.

For the record: formatting is the laying down of tracks and sectors on the hard drive for the organized placement of data - it will not add or remove partitions. You need to do as dsvochak instructed. Alternatively you can boot off of a Windows install CD and use fdisk to remove or create partitions.

GomJabbar wrote:For the record: formatting is the laying down of tracks and sectors on the hard drive for the organized placement of data - it will not add or remove partitions. You need to do as dsvochak instructed. Alternatively you can boot off of a Windows install CD and use fdisk to remove or create partitions.

For a very reasonable price you can get DFSee from
http://www.fsys.nl/
This is the most powerfull disk tool I've seen. It comes with windows, linux and OS/2 versions. If you register/pay for it, you will find the author very helpfull if you have questions/problems.

Disclaimer: No vested interest beyond very satisfied customer.

Ted

Yes, "for the record,"


You run a PARTITIONING tool to add or remove partitions

fdisk, from Microshafted, gdisk from Norton (ghost), or other free free free tools you can download, including most' any linux distro.


I have found very few hdd's that I could not handle with a good late version of MS "fdisk" in other works, a good, late, bootable, Winehosed 98 se boot disk.

you can build one right on a CD, or a floppy

440roadrunner wrote:Yes, "for the record,"


You run a PARTITIONING tool to add or remove partitions

fdisk, from Microshafted, gdisk from Norton (ghost), or other free free free tools you can download, including most' any linux distro.


I have found very few hdd's that I could not handle with a good late version of MS "fdisk" in other works, a good, late, bootable, Winehosed 98 se boot disk.

you can build one right on a CD, or a floppy

I suspect that you are a Windows user. I use both eCS (ne OS/2) and W2K on my T23. I rather doubt that any of the above will run under 'doze, OS/2, DOS and/or Linux, handle HPFS or JFS partitions and create a bootable CD for when it really hits the fan. All for the same low price.

Ted

Run into this problem about a week ago with my T40p, my IBM recovery partition would NOT go away.

The solution I used is pretty hardcore but it works.

Note that it will BLOW EVERYTHING ON THE DISK AWAY TO FACTORY STATE so use it wisely. The disk will need to be initialized before you can create partitions.

It is also cheap since you do not need a partitioning tool.


- Boot off a Win XP or Win2k disk
- choose the recovery option
- type "diskpart"
[edit since I just realised that this drive is the one in the ultrabay and not in the hard drive tray]
- type "select disk 1" to change to the second drive (when you start , it will default to disk 0 which is the main HDD)
- you get a new prompt, type "clean" and see your partitions go away.

Reboot.

smugiri wrote:Run into this problem about a week ago with my T40p, my IBM recovery partition would NOT go away.

The solution I used is pretty hardcore but it works.

Note that it will BLOW EVERYTHING ON THE DISK AWAY TO FACTORY STATE so use it wisely. The disk will need to be initialized before you can create partitions.

It is also cheap since you do not need a partitioning tool.


- Boot of a Win XP or Win2k disk
- choose the recovery option
- type "diskpart"
- you get a new prompt, type "clean" and see your partitions go away.

Reboot.

OUCH! "Note that it will BLOW EVERYTHING ON THE DISK AWAY TO FACTORY STATE so use it wisely. " When I put eCS-OS/2 on my "new" T23, I used DFSee to delete the repair partition after making an image of it. I then defraged and shrank the working W2K partition. I now had the rest of the drive to partition into logical drives. No damage to the W2K although I had backed it up in case.

Ted