Nuked external drive ?

KingL

KingL wrote: »

It can see the disk, but can't do the "convert mbr" step. ("The disk you specified cannot be converted to MBR.

I found this - presumably the drive was manufactured with an MBR

You cannot use Diskpart to create a partition on removable
media. Windows supports at most one MBR partition on removable
media. If the media is manufactured with an MBR, that MBR cannot be altered, but the MBR is followed even if multiple partitions or logical drives are configured. If the media is manufactured without an MBR, the media is treated as a "superfloppy" and no partition structure is written to the media.

I will try the Linux thing, but have no idea what to do when I get there....

KingL

I am now running Ubuntu on a PC (laptop) with the remote drive plugged into it.

I have never seen or used Linux before. the menu on the left of the screen sees the four partitions on the PC, but isn't showing the remote drive.

What do I do ?

thanks

esuhl

Using a full Linux distro is a bit much if you just need to check your partitions. You could just boot from the live CD version of GParted:
http://gparted.org/livecd.php

Alternatively (since you're in Ubuntu now anyway), you can probably run GParted by running "sudo gparted" from a terminal.

KingL

Gparted sees the external drive.

1) It showed two partitions :
Partition: dcv/sdc1 !; Filesystem: Unknown; Size 298GiB
Partition: unallocated; Filesystem: unallocated; Size 2.49MiB


2) I created a new partition table (type: ms-dos). It returned:
Partition: unallocated; Filesystem: unallocated; Size 298GiB

Device info: Model ST332082 0AS
Size 298GiB
Path /dev/sdc

Partition table: msdos
Heads: 255
Sectors/track: 63
Cylinders: 38913
Tot sectors 625142448
Sector Size: 512

Gparted wouldn't format the disk. (menu item "Format to" was greyed out)


3) so I tried creating a partition table, type "Loop", ( ref Gparted userguide page)
It returned:
Partition: /dev/sdc; Filesystem: unknown; Size 298GiB


This time the "Partition> Format to " command _was_ available.

The Formatting operation failed after a few seconds. Details:

Format/dev/sdc as ntfs:
a: calibrate - completed OK
b: clear old file system - completed OK
c: libparted messages:
/dev/sdc: unrecognised disk label

---

that's where I'm at now. I seem to have exhausted the applicable menu options in Gparted.


This doesn't seem to be going very well, does it? What's next ?


thanks

KingL

bump

last orders at the bar, please