How to format drive with partitions

2

I have a drive with 3 partitions - Vista, Ubuntu and just storage. I'm used to creating and formatting partitions.

However, I have never formatted a entire drive with partitions. Any pointers to resources would be great.

Again I wish to format the entire drive removing the partitions.

EDIT: The Vista parition is corrupt and not recoverable.

halogenp

Posted 2010-01-11T00:15:41.770

Reputation:

A little more information is that the Vista partition is corrupt and not recoverable. So I need to fully format it. – None – 2010-01-11T00:25:00.393

Answers

2

It depends on what you're using to format it, but in most cases

  1. Delete the old partitions in your favorite drive management tool -- Windows' Disk Management console, or GParted, etc.
  2. Create new partitions as desired.
  3. Format the new partitions with whatever filesystems are needed.

Journeyman Geek

Posted 2010-01-11T00:15:41.770

Reputation: 119 122

1

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ctzdev

Posted 2010-01-11T00:15:41.770

Reputation: 2 320

1

If your goal is to erase the entire drive and remove the partition table, you can just use DBAN over it.

If you want to keep the partitions but format each as a specific file system, gparted can help you with that.

If you plan on instantly installing a new OS to the entire drive, most OS installers will allow you to select the entire drive as the target, and they will get rid of the partitions before installing.

John T

Posted 2010-01-11T00:15:41.770

Reputation: 149 037

dban takes a while - just deleting the partitions should be sufficient IMHO – Journeyman Geek – 2010-01-11T00:25:38.223

Yes but he hasn't indicated his intentions with the disk. If he's formatting it because he's getting rid of it, I'd DBAN it. – John T – 2010-01-11T00:26:39.080

0

you can use Active@ Kill Disk, it will take care of it and delete all partitions on the drive.

Active@ Kill Disk is freeware.

Molly7244

Posted 2010-01-11T00:15:41.770

Reputation: