Solved Removing Linux OS from external Hard Drive

[justmessedit]

I have acquired a 1TB Western Digital external hard drive that has a Ubuntu Linux operating system on it. The hard drive itself is, I believe, only a couple of years old and has only been used with Linux on it, from what I understand.
I'd prefer to use this 1TB drive for file storage, but I can't see it under the list of disk drives (iow the old My Computer listing), in order to do anything with it. I'm assuming that because it's got another OS on it, it is not readable or detectable in Windows 7.

I have managed to view its partitions under Disk Management; they are: 245MB healthy active primary partition; 1.86 GB healthy primary partition; 93.13 healthy primary partition; and 836.27 healthy primary partition.

But apart from that, I'm not sure what else I can do with the thing, or indeed what I SHOULD do with it, to make it (a) readable and (b) usable for storing the usual photos, files, etc from my Windows 7 pc. I'm reading various other posts here but can't find an exact match of circumstances.

 

[TechpumpkinWD]

Hi there,

Windows cannot read Linux's file system. This is why you cannot use the drive on your Windows PC as it is. You need to format the HDD in NTFS and Windows will be able to use it.
Before making any changes make sure you have copied all the information that you need and it's stored on it. Then go to disk management and right click on a partition, then choose delete volume. Do the same with all the partitions. Then you will have one big unallocated space. Then you can click on it and choose format .

Hope that helps.

 

[justmessedit]

Great! I'll have a go at that now. If it works ok I'll come back and say.

 

[justmessedit]

Well, successfully deleted the volumes, but now have a 245Mb "unallocated" section and an extended partition (free space) of 931GB, thereabouts. Unfortunately, on trying to create a "simple volume", I went through all the process, only to be told at the end that there wasnt enough room on the disk to carry out the operation.
So presumably I'll have to find a way of formatting the whole disk in several sections. I don't have a "format" facility in this Disk management section, all I can do is create a simple volume.

 

[TechpumpkinWD]

In this case you can use WD DLG Support Answers to perform a write zeros to completely erase the HDD. Once done just disconnect and reconnect the drive. Then go to disk management, Windows will notify you that you need to initialize the HDD. Initialize it and you should be then able to create a new volume.

 

[justmessedit]

Thank you. I'll run through that this evening and post back what happened.

 

[justmessedit]

Phew. All done and I think we can say "solved". With thanks.