fORMATTING PROBLEM

[rapchik]

I have a p4 3.2Ghz on a 915gav mobo with 1gb ram. I am using win XP SP2. I have 2 120Gb hard disks partitioned into 7 partitions. I want to format on of the partitions but everytime I try to do it I get a message saying the drive is locked by some windows utilities and needs to be dismounted before trying to format. tried to format in command prompt and tried to dismount the drive but it says unable to dismount. I want to format the drive becoz even though the drive is empty the drive is showing around 2.5 gb data, which seems to be in every partition, i.e. in every partition the data quantity in the drive exceeds the actual data by around 2-2.5gb.

Can anybody help me in formatting the drive and how to get full storage in a partition without having any hidden data.

 

[poertner_1274]

Well to format the drive, get yourself a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com and boot to it and format it that way. This way you are not in Windows, and won't have any problems with the drive being locked.

BTW
:wave:Welcome to TechSpot:wave:

 

[rapchik]

Thanks for welcoming me to TechSpot.

I have mooted that Idea but won't it formatt me entire harddisk. I just want to format a particular partition not the entire hard drive as have some imp data on the other partitions.

if nothing works then would take a backup of the entire disk on another HD and will format the entire disk. But will keep that as the last option.

 

[pkroks]

no, you should choose the partition to format...
it won't format the whole hdd!

 

[poertner_1274]

no, you should choose the partition to format...
it won't format the whole hdd!

Concur, when you get to the format screen it will list all the partitions you have, simply choose the one you want to format.

 

[pkroks]

Concur, when you get to the format screen it will list all the partitions you have, simply choose the one you want to format.

I disagree, when you get to the command screen, you will either type in format c: or format d: etc... depending on which partition you want to format.. The only place i can think of in windows 98 is under fdisk when choosing the primary and secondary partitions.

So rapchik -----> Just note the drive letter of the partition you want to format, and enter that letter after format, so for drive with letter E you would type Format E:

 

[rapchik]

thnks guys for the help. will give it a try.

 

[poertner_1274]

HAHAHA
My bad, for some reason I was thinking about using an Windows OS install disc to do the formatting. Which it will list the partitions there.

For using DOS you will have to specify which one to use. Thank you for the clarification.

 

[patio]

Keep in mind that WinXP treats partitions a bit differently than the other flavors of Windows did...to prevent accidently removing the wrong partition from Explorer find which partition you want to format and make a new folder called AAA for example.
Now when you use the bootdisk at the A: prompt type in the drive letter you are going to format and hit enter H: for example.
Now at the H: prompt type dir /p and hit enter. If it's the correct partition you will see the AAA directory at the top of the page.
If it's not there then use the same directions for each drive letter till you find the correct one.

Better safe than sorry.

patio.