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Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9754

Posted: 03:39am 11 Dec 2018

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Old system SSD, want to reuse it as an external USB SSD.

Open Disk Management, attempt to delete partitions.
Windoze lets me delete the system partition, but flatly refuses to let me touch the other three partitions on there. Recovery, a GPT boot partition, and some other partition I cannot remember the name of.

No amount of playing about in DM will allow this to happen.

Sigh.....

Plug SSD into Puppy Linux, Run Gparted, Delete partitions, Done.
Plug now flattened SSD back into windows, setup as normal.

Why do the Windoze system tools always treat the user like they don't REALLY know what they are doing? (rhetorical)

OK, I guess some people do need to be protected from themselves, but once you are in a partition manager, one assumes you know enough to know what it is you want to do.
It's not like the Windows DM is one or two clicks away, it is buried way down in CONTROL PANEL/ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS/COMPUTER MANAGEMENT/DISK MANAGEMENT...

Do any of the members here happen to know of any Windoze utilities they could recommend that will run in Windows, but have the power of the Linux-based partitioning tools, and will just do what you ask them to do?

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

bigmik

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Joined: 20/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 2971

Posted: 04:09am 11 Dec 2018

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Hi Grogster,

I went through the exact same issue last week.

I had reports of disk 2 in my raid box spitting errors and needed to be replaced. I had a spare drive so swapped it then tested the old drive in my PC.

But when I opened DISK MANAGEMENT. I got a protected GPT drive.

I googled that and there were some commands I had to run in a Command Promt window which deleted the partition.

I think it was run DiskPart.
SHOW disks
SELECT DISK (the relevant one of course)
and DELETE disk..

If I find it I will add the URL here.

Kind Regards,

MickEdited by bigmik 2018-12-12

Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<<

bigmik

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Joined: 20/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 2971

Posted: 04:15am 11 Dec 2018

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Hi Grogs,

Here is the link that showed what to do..

More or less as I said..

Link Here

Kind Regards,

Mick

PS.

I did extensive sector by sector tests on the drive that `failed' (about 15hrs of testing) and it passed every single test..

Reading the SMART data it seems that it had a bit of a brain fart somewhere but they seem to be stable now.. It is now delegated to a `transfer drive' for non critical files.

The raid is back up and happy as Larry (or Fat Mik)

PPS.

No Coffs Harbour blokes interested in a beer next week?

Kind Regards,

Mick

Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<<

ajkw
Senior Member

Joined: 29/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 290

Posted: 09:03am 11 Dec 2018

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Coffs is a bit north of here. Are you driving? If so you would be travelling through my area.

Anthony.

BrianP
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Joined: 30/03/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 292

Posted: 09:43am 11 Dec 2018

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I use MiniTool's Partition Wizard (it's free). So far it's coped with anything that I throw at it. Thoroughly recommend it...

www.minitool.com

B

Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9754

Posted: 09:19pm 11 Dec 2018

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Thanks for the pointers, Mik, I will check out that option.
Thanks, Brian, I will check this out too.

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

bigmik

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Joined: 20/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 2971

Posted: 11:19pm 11 Dec 2018

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Hi ANthony,

ajkw said Coffs is a bit north of here. Are you driving? If so you would be travelling through my area.

Sorry, We are flying up...

Kind Regards,

Mick

Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<<

Phil23
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Joined: 27/03/2016
Location: Australia
Posts: 1667

Posted: 08:31am 12 Dec 2018

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Hey Grog,

Testdisk pretty much gets me thru most issues I have faced.

Also great for data recovery.

have a look here.

Cheers.

Phil23
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Joined: 27/03/2016
Location: Australia
Posts: 1667

Posted: 08:33am 12 Dec 2018

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bigmik said
No Coffs Harbour blokes interested in a beer next week?

Bit further west here.

about 3 hours....

Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9754

Posted: 10:17pm 25 Jan 2019

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BrianP said I use MiniTool's Partition Wizard (it's free). So far it's coped with anything that I throw at it. Thoroughly recommend it...

www.minitool.com

B

I just had the need to wipe another ex. Windoze system drive, so I could use it as external storage, and had the exact same problem as at the start of this thread, so I tried MiniTool, and it is excellent.

Thanks, Brian.

In two or three clicks, I could delete all partitions, and create one new one spanning the entire drive, and am now copying files to it.

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

BrianP
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Joined: 30/03/2017
Location: Australia
Posts: 292

Posted: 03:24am 27 Jan 2019

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