Repartition/Reformat origin drive when in external enclosure

[mpcook]

I have replaced the 20g drive in my X31 with a 60g drive. The 60 works great and I am very happy with it. I have the 20g that came with the machine in an external USB enclosure and it works fine as well. However, it shows 15g free and I suspect the rest is taken up by the hidden partition. I have tried to merge the partitions with Partition Magic but it does not see the hidden partition. Is there a way to wipe the drive and repartition/reformat and get the 20g free, without reinstalling it as the primary drive in the machine?

Thansk for any hints.

[bevross]

from http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

In XP, go to the DOS prompt (e.g., type "cmd" in the "Run" line).
Type "diskpart"

This will enter you into a little area where you can type more commands, with a prompt:

DISKPART>
type "?" will give you a list of all commands.

here's a sequence of commands to select the right disk (assuming you have the USB drive connected, it will be "disk 1" , the C: drive is "disk 0") --

DISKPART>select disk 1
DISKPART>detail disk

(here you verify that you are at the selected disk)

and here is where you type "clean"!!

I assume no responsibility if you wipe out the wrong hard drive inadvertently!

[mpcook]

Thanks for the pointer, I will try this (with care!).