How To Remove Recovery partition

[KenY7744]

I have the 320Gb HD which came in my Dell, but I have replaced it with a 1TB drive which has my Win7 OS on it. I'd like to reformat the 320, but there is a small partition which has the original Dell recovery on it.

I've tried to remove the partition in Disk Manager, but it is not offered as a choice.

I have also tried to install Win7 on this disk while the 1TB is disconnected, but get messages that I can't install Win7 on it.

Is there a free utility available online which will do a complete wipe of the HD and alow me to partition it anew? Or perhaps a way to do it with means currently available to me?

Thanks in advance.
Ken

 

[DocBrown]

Check out this tutorial on Partition Wizard

:ar: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html?ltr=P

 

[KenY7744]

Unfortunately, the free version doesn't

Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, the free version doesn't convert dynamic partitions to basic disks.

Any other FREE utils out there that can totally reformat the drive and zap that dynamic partition?

TIA
Ken

 

[essenbe]

You may try Parted Magic. It should do that, it will do most things. It includes gparted and a linux utility called hard drive erase.

 

[KenY7744]

My problem resolved - free, simple, included in Win7

It's amazing that all the suggestions I received were for utilities that either cost money for what I needed to do, did not do what I wanted to do, or used UNIX or some other OS that I don't use.

In order to change a HD from a dynamic drive to a basic drive you simple need to use a command line prgram in win7 called diskpart. I'll dispense with all the techie stuff. I found something on Microsoft Technet which gave several methods to do the task. Just google "How to convert dynamic disk to basic disk Win7" and you will see near the top an article in MS Technet.

Thanks for all the attempts at resolving this for me.

Ken

 

[Walle Duc]

I found the easiest way to do this is using the DeskPart utility which is already available in the Window 7 OS. Note that this method will wipe off everything on the disk. So, backup your data first. I presume that you intend to reset up window on this disk, like I do.

1) To got o the utility, first start the Command Prompt utility. Type CMD in the window search bar.

2) At Command Prompt window, type "DISKPART" and hit Enter. A new window will be opened with the prompt "DISKPART>".

3) Select the disk which has the recovery partition that you have problem removing. For example: Disk 1.
Type "select disk 1" and hit Enter key
You should see the message "Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

4) List the partition to check the partition number.
Type "list partition" and hit enter key.
You should see all the partitions for the selected disk listed

5) Select the recovery partition. When you list the partitions, you should see the type as Recovery. For example partition 1 is the recovery partition.
Type "select partition 1" and hit Enter key.
You should see the message "Partition 1 is now the selected partition."

6) Type "CLEAN" and hit Enter key.
You should the message "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk."
Warning: All data will be wipe out.

You are done removing the recovery partition.