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Partition Removal on External Hard Drive

  • 21-11-2011 9:13pm
    #1
    Dubh Geannain
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,553 ✭✭✭


    Hi. I have an external hard drive from an old samsung laptop that I'm looking to tidy up before selling on.

    I've formatted both partitions but I want to delete one of the partitions so that the disk will only appear as one drive. I've gone to Microsoft Management Console but haven't used it before so I want to double check if I'm doing it right.

    I have an "Active, primary partition" and a "primary partition". Right clicking on the "primary partition" I get the option to delete volume (not partition).

    Will that do it for me? Or do I then have to delete both partitions?

    Thanks


Comments

  • #2
    asif2011
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 185 ✭✭asif2011


    Just delete all of the partitions, then download TrueCrypt and format the drive with it. It'll destroy all data on the drive, and will make sure nothing is recoverable to someone with bad intentions. Then go back to Disk Management and recreate a primary NTFS partition. That should be that...


  • #3
    Dubh Geannain
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,553 ✭✭✭Dubh Geannain


    Actually there's a recovery partition that I don't get the option to delete. About 13Gigs in size.


  • #4
    yoyo
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 11,017 Mod ✭✭✭✭yoyo


    Dubh Geannain wrote: »
    Actually there's a recovery partition that I don't get the option to delete. About 13Gigs in size.

    GParted is good at doing this kind of stuff. Just burn the iso to a Cd, boot off it and delete the recovery partition, then extend the volume

    Nick

    My Beer Glass collection site 🍺

    My Irish Callcards site



  • #5
    asif2011
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 185 ✭✭asif2011


    As long as you want to wipe it you should be OK, TrueCrypt can just wipe the whole drive for you anyway so you don't really need to the delete the partitions. Tutorial here...

    EDIT: I should point out you should choose the option "Create a volume with a non-system partition/device"


  • #6
    Dubh Geannain
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,553 ✭✭✭Dubh Geannain


    Thanks for the info guys. Looks like I'm all done.

    I used Partition Wizard in the end but it seems to have done the trick.

    Yoyo, I didn't need anything from the disk at all so a full wipe was all I needed and to have it all in one partition for tidiness sake. It's in an external dock so I wasn't booting off it anyway.

    There's about 7 MBs used now according to Windows explorer, although you can't see anything on it. That's standard I presume.


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  • #7
    U_Fig
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 893 ✭✭✭U_Fig


    Dubh Geannain wrote: »
    Thanks for the info guys. Looks like I'm all done.

    I used Partition Wizard in the end but it seems to have done the trick.

    Yoyo, I didn't need anything from the disk at all so a full wipe was all I needed and to have it all in one partition for tidiness sake. It's in an external dock so I wasn't booting off it anyway.

    There's about 7 MBs used now according to Windows explorer, although you can't see anything on it. That's standard I presume.

    That's about right tho if you want the data to be non recoverable ( well at least by joe soap) the you need a low level format with about 3 pass to be safe especially if it's sensitive data if not standard format will do.


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