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Repartitioning external USB HDD

Forum Storage : General Storage - Repartitioning external USB HDD

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Nils   08-19-2008 at 07:15:40 PM

Hello,

I'm using the HDD from my previous PC to build an external USB HDD. Now there are two drives on that HDD, one primary active partition containing the OS and an extended partition with one logical drive. I do not care anymore about the data stored on it so everything may get lost. I want to convert it into a HDD with just one primary partition (or should I go for an external partition only ???) covering the size of the whole HDD. I read about it on the internet and found out that you can use FDISK to get the job done (Also read GDISK is newer and maybe better ???), but will F/GDISK be able to spot the drive when I have already converted it into a USB device. I already tried Partition Magic 8 but it could not detect a USB memory stick so I suppose can't see an external drive either.

If anyone can help me with this problem, please post

Thanks

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rozar   08-19-2008 at 08:53:47 PM
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First plug the usb connector into your computer and let windows recognize it.

Use "disk manager", In windows right click on "my computer" then select "manage". On the windows that comes up click on "disk management". From there you should see the disk/volume for the new drive. If you do then right click to delete the existing partitions. When all are deleted right click again to create a new partition. Follow the prompts and you are all set.

Message back if that does not work.

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Nils   08-20-2008 at 02:02:02 AM
- 0 +

Thanks for the input. I used Partition Magic and now I have a drive with one big primary partition in FAT32 of 250GB. Partition Magic offers you the ability to keep all the data on the drive while repartitioning so that's what I have done. Now I want to get it clean and reformat it in FAT32, but that's not possible from the windows environment, it only allows you to format in FAT32 for drives up to 32GB. It is possible from DOS, I know, but I don't know with which application. Can any of you guys help?

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SomeJoe7777   08-21-2008 at 02:23:06 AM
- 0 +

Why do you want FAT32?

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