gparted

[Nick]

gparted is a very good program for formatting hdds which cannot be formatted by windows because the hdd has had linux or something else on it. it can fomrat into ntfs and fat32 and loads of others, i found it useful for formating my old seagate hdd.

heres the link:

GParted -- Download

and you need a iso burner so you can burn the file onto a CD-R and boot from it.

 

[BoysNightOut]

Yes. We know. =)

 

[eyeCpc]

If you are not going to run GParted from the hard drive and want the latest platform independent version go with the 0.3.3.0 version found at SourceForge.net: Files

Need something to burn iso images to cd-rs? Try the free BurnOn found at BurnOn CD & DVD - Free DVD Burning Software - Freeware CD burner Windows XP & Vista

Meanwhile I'm still trying to find out Solaris 10 made a mess with the Vista boot loader and whether or not to put Mandriva back on?

 

[Nick]

Yes. We know. =)

i was just telling people because it save me a lot of time

 

[eyeCpc]

i was just telling people because it save me a lot of time

You better believe it! I found where the XP installer left some space unallocated while GParted is far better at showing the actual drive space. Vista now can resize and format partitions when booting from the install disk but GParted still works here.

 

[Nick]

with windows wen you try and format a linux hd you get the message saying "Windows cannot configure this hd".

 

[eyeCpc]

with windows wen you try and format a linux hd you get the message saying "Windows cannot configure this hd".

That's due to the installer not seeing Linux VFat type partitions. A drive tool like cfdisk or GParted is needed to remove any existing Linux partitions for the Windows installer to then work on creating and formatting new ones. But if you already have GParted in use you can simply create the new NTFS type primary right after removing the Linux type. Windows then formats it later.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

GParted is on the Ubuntu CD, but it killed my NTFS partition on a resize twice (reinstalled Windows again, tried again, broke it again). I successfully used GParted on Ubuntu 6.10 CD to resize FAT-32 though, on my laptop and on my old computer. For NTFS, I prefer QTParted on the System Rescue CD.

 

[eyeCpc]

That seems odd since I've used GParted for resizing both XP and Vista primaries without anything go bad. Are you sure you didn't have a bad burn? Make sure the version you use is "platform independent" as well like the 0.3.3.0 version. Unfortunately that's the last of that line. Fortunately you can now resize NTFS partitions by a boot from the Vista install disk or in the updated Disk Management tool.