Need help erasing IBM 6.4 gig HDD

[Wolfchild]

Need some help - picked up a used IBM 6.4 gig HDD from the forum here and it apparently has NTFS on it, and I'll be using FAT32 on it (windows98se) so I had to erase the NTFS first. I don't think there is actually anything wrong with the drive, I'm just encountering a bit of trouble getting it erased.

I'm using Killdisk to try to write zeroes to it but I get a message "illegal partition table - drive 00 sector 0" as the computer boots with Killdisk and the program will simply not do anything with this drive when you activate it. I looked on IBM's website but I'm not finding a simple drive utility like Western Digital or the others have to erase it. The WD utility doesn't work because it doesn't find a WD drive. Any ideas on nuking the drive? Or even just the specific name of an IBM utility for this? I've looked at their site and they have a bunch of stuff for download but it's bewildering me what it's all for. Something that works similar to Killdisk would do me okay too, or if one of the other drive manufacturer's utilities doesn't check for brand.

 

[thorin]

Use fdisk (or partition magic or whatever) to delete the partitions and setup new ones.

Thorin

 

[Wolfchild]

fdisk won't work when there is already an NTFS partition on the drive, that's the problem.

 

[newbiepcuser]

Drop in bootable Win2k/XP cd-rom. Kill the partition and you can format it there.

2nd option, mount to another machine that has Win2k/XP Pro, and then destroy the parition from there with disk mangement from therre. see if that works.

 

[ChefJoe]

since when ? Use a Win98 boot-disk's version of fdisk. fdisk, check partitions, delete anything you see, then make new partitions.

 

[Wolfchild]

Okay I WAS using a 95 OSR2 boot disk but I just tried a Win98SE one. Something funny is going on.
Now no partitions are visible in fdisk, but when I go to create one, it hangs. I also made a Partition
Magic boot diskette set and here again the program hangs as it's loading. I hook the other old drive
I have up and Partition Magic starts right up, so something about this drive is making these apps hang.

Could this be a virus or something? Starting to frustrate me but I really don't think there is anything
wrong with the drive physically.

 

[Mday]

when using fdisk on ntfs, you have to delete a "non dos" partition.

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Mday
when using fdisk on ntfs, you have to delete a "non dos" partition.

Exactly you must select delete NON DOS partition,then create a new DOS partition & format it.

after that you should be good to go.

 

[beatle]

I use free fdisk. Its interface is identical to the original fdisk from MS, but its open source, supports large drives up to 128 gigs (180 gig in the latest beta), and is much faster than the original fdisk.

 

[Wolfchild]

Okay thanks for the freefdisk link. I might try that.

Right now though, I had found the IBM utility finally and it did write zeroes to the drive.
At this time I am setting up a partition with fdisk but something is still fishy...it is taking
forever to verify drive integrity...over an hour and it's only at 27% What could be the
problem??

 

[Macro2]

If you use fdisk you should find an option to delete "non-dos" partitions or something like that...
Mac