• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Trying to remove the MBR of a drive?

W

wolfestone

Member
I'm trying to completely wipe a SATA drive I have so I can reuse it in a new system. I've deleted all the partitions through windows disk management, and done a 'write zeros' using the western digital tool. It's the only SATA drive in the system, the operating system lives on an IDE drive.

When I check the properties of the drive though, it says the partition style is Master Boot Record (MBR), there are no volumes listed - it just reports the unallocated space (full capacity).

I'd like to start completely fresh with this drive but I don't know enough about how the MBR works to figure out if I have in fact wiped it or if it's still on there.

It will be the primary operating system drive in the new system, if that matters.

Thanks for any help.
 
When I wipe a drive with the DOS based command line program "WIPE" (also known as "ZAP") it is dead blank (like when you get a new drive in a box - needs to be prepped).

The problem no doubt is that your WD wipe utility is not sufficiently thorough.
 
Currently your OS is in the IDE drive so your MBR of your OS resides in the IDE drive. If you install the OS to your SATA drive then your MBR will be on the SATA drive. Don't worry too much about the MBR. It will always be there. You can format your OS to your SATA drive and backup all your files from your IDE and do a complete wipe to your IDE.
 
Thanks all.

I've run into a weird problem now. I've removed the SATA drive, and windows 7 will no longer boot from the IDE drive. It says the boot manager is missing. I'm going to try and run a repair install and see if it'll add whatever it needs to the IDE drive.
 
Yeah Win7 searches for an existing bootloader or whatever and just adds itself to the list or something, so just because you install the OS on drive X doesn't mean that the bootloader will also be on that drive - caught me too 😉

fixmbr should help though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top