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Okay folks I'm at wits end so, I'm giving up & calling in help. I'll be as detailed as possible. Prerequisites: I have a 500 GB external hard drive that's now only showing 465 GB of empty space. I believe the other 35 GB partition is being locked by Windows 8's bootsect.exe or something to that affect. I was trying to set up Windows 8 on my external hard drive without having to burn the .iso image to a disc. I thought it could be done but, boy was I wrong. I created a separate partition on my C: drive to hold some other files including the Windows 8 extracted .iso files. I also created a separate partion on the external hard drive to install Windows 8's MBR via the command line:
D:/BOOT/BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 H: (where D: is the new partition on my boot drive & H: is the partition on the external hard drive where I installed Windows 8's MBR)
The MBR installed just fine. I then copied all the .iso files into the H: partition. I did all of that in my test to see if I could boot from the H: drive giving that it now had an MBR & setup files to go on. I now know that is a major fail & is completely impossible. I've since deleted the D: partition on my boot drive (re-merged it with C
I tried to delete the extra partition on my external hard drive but, it's not there anymore 0.o I tried to find it with Disk Management & EASUS Partition Master along with WinDirStat, etc... but, to no avail. They all say the same thing. 465 GB drive :/ I must've searched a dozen forums & I already tried turning off Restore, deleting old set-up, upgrade & shadow file, checked my Norton for back-up sets, etc... Now here's the kicker: EASUS Partition Master lists the drive as a GPT (Data Partition) Type. Now that I've never seen before with this program. I googled gpt data partition & I can't really say I understand what it means but, there was talk of MBR in some of the results so, I believe Windows 8's MBR may be the culprit behind my missing partition. So, the question remains, how do you uninstall the Windows 8 MBR?
Here are some screen shots of my set up:
500 GB external hard drive:
Disk Management:
EASUS Partition Manager:
If the pics are too blurry (damn snipping tool -_-), I also have them as attachments...
D:/BOOT/BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 H: (where D: is the new partition on my boot drive & H: is the partition on the external hard drive where I installed Windows 8's MBR)
The MBR installed just fine. I then copied all the .iso files into the H: partition. I did all of that in my test to see if I could boot from the H: drive giving that it now had an MBR & setup files to go on. I now know that is a major fail & is completely impossible. I've since deleted the D: partition on my boot drive (re-merged it with C
I tried to delete the extra partition on my external hard drive but, it's not there anymore 0.o I tried to find it with Disk Management & EASUS Partition Master along with WinDirStat, etc... but, to no avail. They all say the same thing. 465 GB drive :/ I must've searched a dozen forums & I already tried turning off Restore, deleting old set-up, upgrade & shadow file, checked my Norton for back-up sets, etc... Now here's the kicker: EASUS Partition Master lists the drive as a GPT (Data Partition) Type. Now that I've never seen before with this program. I googled gpt data partition & I can't really say I understand what it means but, there was talk of MBR in some of the results so, I believe Windows 8's MBR may be the culprit behind my missing partition. So, the question remains, how do you uninstall the Windows 8 MBR?Here are some screen shots of my set up:
500 GB external hard drive:
Disk Management:
EASUS Partition Manager:
If the pics are too blurry (damn snipping tool -_-), I also have them as attachments...
My Computer
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- Acer Aspire 5742G-7200
- OS
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
- CPU
- 2.53 GHz
- Memory
- 4 GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- Nvidia Geforce GT 555M Cuda 2GB
