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old hard drive made into external storage: How do I delte everything?

StrikerkcStrikerkc Registered User regular
edited January 2010 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
So, I had an old lap top that's motherboard died on me, and I got a hard drive enclosure for it, and now I've got a USB mass storage device made out of it.

Only problem is I can't delete all my old stuff off of it. There are a few folders that no matter what I tell it to show me, and no mater if they're set to read only or not, I can't delte them. Just tells me access is denied or that it's in use by a program (which it sure as heck shouldn't be).

The properties also says that there is still 13 gigs of data stored on the thing, and I can't get it to show me what it is, let alone delete it.

So I'm looking for a way to format the thing clean, but still keep/put on what ever info is needed so that it can still be used as a mass storage device.

Any one know how I can get that done?

Strikerkc on

Posts

  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Boot into dos, format or boot from Linux Live CD, format.

    http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
    http://www.slax.org/

    Visti on
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  • StrikerkcStrikerkc Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    I guess I'm not sure how I'd Boot the external hard drive into dos. You saying to just open a dos prompt on my PC while the drive is conected and type a f:/ "format" or soemthing like that? Right now it's just working like a giant USB flash drive that just has some of it's old files on it.

    Strikerkc on
  • travathiantravathian Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Reboot the computer, when it starts up go to My Computer, find the drive, right click, chose format. Chances are you were doing something that accessed it and that program may still have a process running in the background. Rebooting should kill that process.

    travathian on
  • StrikerkcStrikerkc Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    travathian wrote: »
    Reboot the computer, when it starts up go to My Computer, find the drive, right click, chose format. Chances are you were doing something that accessed it and that program may still have a process running in the background. Rebooting should kill that process.

    If I manage to format the thing, will it still even be able to open up as a storage device?

    Strikerkc on
  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Yes. If you have it in a USB enclosure, and format it with NTFS, it'll recognize it as an empty removable hard drive ready to use.

    I have a similar problem with a drive that became my data drive. A few random folders with 1 or two files in them are completely locked, even if I take ownership of them. Fortunately all those files together are about 3MB, so I don't miss the space. It's kind of annoying to have those folders sitting there though.

    Tofystedeth on
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  • StrikerkcStrikerkc Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Tofystedeth wrote: »
    Yes. If you have it in a USB enclosure, and format it with NTFS, it'll recognize it as an empty removable hard drive ready to use.

    I have a similar problem with a drive that became my data drive. A few random folders with 1 or two files in them are completely locked, even if I take ownership of them. Fortunately all those files together are about 3MB, so I don't miss the space. It's kind of annoying to have those folders sitting there though.

    NTFS? I'm not familiar with that term?

    other wise, cool stuff to hear =)

    Strikerkc on
  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    NTFS is a file system.

    TychoCelchuuu on
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Isn't NTFS basically the only choice you have with Windows now-a-days using that basic format method? But yeah, do that. It should work, I just assumed you had tried that and failed for some reason.

    Visti on
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  • ZellZell Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Visti wrote: »
    Isn't NTFS basically the only choice you have with Windows now-a-days using that basic format method? But yeah, do that. It should work, I just assumed you had tried that and failed for some reason.
    Pretty sure the basic format method allows you to use FAT32, it just does not allow large FAT32 partitions, because of performance concerns.

    Zell on
  • StrikerkcStrikerkc Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Got it formated, seems to work just fine. Thank to all of you :mrgreen:

    Strikerkc on
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