How to format hard drive that has recovery partition on it.

By Sharpstick68
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Sharpstick68

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I have an old 1 TB Western Digital Blue drive that I want to format, but it has a recovery partition that's 18 GB. How can I remove that partition so that when I format it, it becomes one big partition?.

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+BudMan MVC

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No reason to use that... he can do it from windows with diskpart.

 

Simple as

delete partition override. 

 

From admin cmd prompt 

C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.18362.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: I5-WIN

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          232 GB      0 B
  Disk 1    Online          119 GB      0 B
  Disk 2    Online         2794 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 3    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 4    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 5    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 6    No Media           0 B      0 B

DISKPART> sel disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list part

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary            500 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            231 GB   501 MB
  Partition 3    Recovery           836 MB   232 GB

DISKPART> sel part 3

Partition 3 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART>

  

DISKPART> help delete partition

    Deletes the partition with focus.

Syntax:  DELETE PARTITION [NOERR] [OVERRIDE]

    NOERR       For scripting only. When an error is encountered, DiskPart
                continues to process commands as if the error did not occur.
                Without the NOERR parameter, an error causes DiskPart to exit
                with an error code.

    OVERRIDE    Enables DiskPart to delete any partition regardless of type.
                Typically, DiskPart only permits you to delete known data
                partitions.

    You cannot delete the system partition, boot partition, or any partition
    that contains the active paging file or crash dump (memory dump) filed.

    A partition must be selected for this operation to succeed.

    Partitions cannot be deleted from dynamic disks or created on dynamic
    disks.

Example:

 

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Sharpstick68

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Alright I'm using diskpart, and I got to the part to delete the partition, but it says 

 

Virtual Disk Service error:

Cannot delete a protected partition without the force protected parameter set.

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+BudMan MVC

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I don't have windows 7 handy to check.... Let me see if I have a VM I can fire up ready.

 

Nope.. Sorry.. ######.. you should be able to just use the force - do a help command like I showed

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+BudMan MVC

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It really should be the same command.. Your running cmd as admin.. Post up screenshots

 

Which ones - you have a few parts there.. you want to delete them all.. Are you trying to delte the efi one, you have to set the id for thos

SET ID=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7"

 

After you have selected it, then use the del part override

 

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Mindovermaster Global Moderator

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Yes, Windows can do it natively, but GParted will allow you to delete those pesky partitions.

 

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+BudMan MVC

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If you want to do it with gui, then grab a free tool.. But it can be done with the diskpart, but you have to be in elevated cmd prompt, and you have to use the override command and those efi are different you have to set the ID.. With the last one - you might be able to just right click that in disk manager and delete it.

 

If you want the whole disk gone, you can prob just use the clean cmd

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+BudMan MVC

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Did you read what it does ;)  It gets rid of EVERYTHING!  You then repart it how you want and format it.  You can do that in the gui.

 

Where did my post go - I thought I posted cmd help

  

Syntax:  CLEAN [ALL]

    ALL         Specifies that each and every byte\sector on the disk is set to
                zero, which completely deletes all data contained on the disk.

    On master boot record (MBR) disks, only the MBR partitioning information
    and hidden sector information are overwritten. On GUID partition table
    (GPT) disks, the GPT partitioning information, including the Protective
    MBR, is overwritten. If the ALL parameter is not used, the first 1MB
    and the last 1MB of the disk are zeroed. This erases any disk formatting
    that had been previously applied to the disk. The disk's state after
    cleaning the disk is 'UNINITIALIZED'.

 

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Sharpstick68

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I'm scared to do this in command prompt, what gui program can you recommend I use because I have other drives connected to my machine and I dont want to risk getting rid of those

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+BudMan MVC

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just make sure you select the right one ;)

But sure you can use the tool that @Mindovermaster linked too.. or there are many others.. One sec

 

https://www.disk-partition.com/free-partition-manager.html

 

That one should work.. But there are like a 100 of them.. But there is no reason really you can list the partitions on your disk and make sure your just sel the correct one before you do clean command ;)

 

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ThaCrip

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20 minutes ago, Sharpstick68 said:

This is the one in question that I'm trying to do it on by the way

 

 

0000d.png

 

Using that you can just delete each one and then re-create one large drive. it's pretty easy.

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+BudMan MVC

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Yeah pretty sure - have not used it in YEARS!! since you can do everything they can do just with diskpart

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Sharpstick68

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8 minutes ago, ThaCrip said:

 

Using that you can just delete each one and then re-create one large drive.

I tried right-clicking the one that says Healthy (EFI System Partition) and everything was greyed out, the only one I could do anything with is the 912.11 GB one.

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+BudMan MVC

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the disk manger built in will not allow you to del thouse you have to use a tool, or disk part.. Just use the clean command.. Are you other disks 1TB in size?  Its pretty hard to select the wrong ;)

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