How do you format a hard drive?

Question

I know how to, however the catch is this.

I installed an operating system on the other hard drive, if you're curious it's called gNewSense and it sucks, I wish to format that drive.

I can't access it to format it as you would normally on Vista, as the drive doesn't appear under "My Computer" so I can't do it that way.

If you know an alternative way please let me know.

I can get to it via the device manager, my system detects it, it's working as it should.
However I cannot format the thing so as to wipe the resident operating system.

I wish to install another operating system called Ubuntu.
As I wish to have more access to my computers resources, as Vista hogs RAM and supposedly Ubuntu multi-processes better. As well as the Vista OS is a 32-bit and my processor and system can handle 64-bit. So basically I want a better operating system but I don't want to wipe Vista out... yet.

I plan on using what is called Blender 3D.
My computer is very fast, however it would run better from what I hear on Ubuntu. A Linux distribution.

So how could I format that drive that Vista doesn't put up on the "My Computer" thing along with the other drives and the usual USB ports it detects.

I hope I'm clear.

Answer 1

Ok, first Non-Windows operating systems often use other formatting systems for the drives.



Often ones not recognized by windows.



and that you don't see the drive in "my computer" is entirely to be expected.



SO, what you need to do (it's actually quite simple)



Go to your start menu and select "control panel"

Once control panel loads choose "Administrative tools"

From Administrative tools select "computer management"



On the "computer management" page look at the iten next to the bottom

in the column on the left, "disc management"



Look for the drive there and right click on it to first delete whatever partition is there

then format that partition.



MAke sure you have the correct drive, but there will be a hint... the drive will not be displayed

as "NTFS" or "FAT32" but rather as "unknown" or "raw"



Hope this helps



Good luck!



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Answer 2

If the drive isn't detected as a drive and is instead detected as another piece of hardware, it can't be formatted by Windows. Usually there is a manual way to reset external drives. I suggest you refer to your external drive's manual for a better answer. If you would like a more specific answer, please reply with the make of the drive. Thanks!

As a side note, Ubuntu is very configuration dependent for its speed and I would advise against switching from Vista to Ubuntu unless you are very tech savvy. I prefer Vista over Ubuntu still even though I am well rehearsed computer-wise because it experiences fewer crashes, on average runs smoother, an is more reliable than open source OSes. Have you tried reducing your Vista's RAM requirement by optomizing for performance in the control panel?

Answer 3

You have two options.



One is to go to control panel and then computer management. When that application comes up there is a section called storage and then disk management. There you will see all drives and all the partitions contained there. From there you can delete all the partitions on that drive and leave it blank for Ubuntu to handle the installation and the formatting and partitioning of that drive.



Option 2 is to leave the drive the way it is and use the advanced drive functions in the Ubuntu installer to delete and recreate the new and proper partitions there.

Answer 4

One way might be to do something like this:



* Download and burn an Ubuntu image to a disk.

* Disconnect the Vista drive

* Boot from the Ubuntu install disk, formatting the 'untouchable' drive



You could either continue installation of Ubuntu on the drive, or you could just abort the installation procedure, reconnect the Vista drive, boot from that, and do a WUBI installation of Ubuntu - that's entirely up to you.

Answer 5

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