On Oct 19, 6:40*pm, Paul wrote:
Searcher7 wrote:
On Oct 19, 10:02 am, Paul wrote:
Searcher7wrote:
I plugged a MAC-formatted 500GB external hard drive into the USB port
of my Windows XP PC which has 20GB and 40GB "C" and "D" drives.
In "Disk Management" I was only given an option to set up a new
partition. Now the drive shows as only 17.76GB.
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l.../Computer/Comp....
Can anyone tell me what I did wrong or should do next?
Thanks.
Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.
Your info doesn't seem to line up with what I'm reading here.
If the disk was GPT, the "protective MBR" installed is supposed
to mark the entire disk suggesting it can't be used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

You could try PTEDIT32, and see if any suspicious numbers are
present. PTEDIT32 tries to read the MBR. If you saw a partition type
field value of 0xEE, then you'd suspect it was prepared as a GPT disk.
You could take a screen shot of this, once you get it running. By
using Windows Disk Management, you've already made changes to the MBR,
so the information there is no longer exactly as the Macintosh left it..

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...q/utilities/PT....

If your intention is to repurpose the disk solely for Windows,
then you should be able to erase it and start from scratch.
The question then would be, what is a good way to do this.

OK, the Windows "diskpart" tool may be able to do this. Diskpart is
a command line tool. It takes multiple commands, to achieve
results. First, you have to "select" a disk, and then apply
commands to it (look for some sample diskpart scripts on the web,
to see how a typical session is done). The most promising lead, is
the "clean" command. There are other disk deleting programs that
might work. Virtually anything you use, has some element of danger
associated with it (i.e. erasing the wrong disk), so be careful.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...65(WS.10).aspx

* * Paul

Nothing is ever simple. :-(

I have no idea what "GPT", "MBR" are, and I typed "PTEDIT32" in "RUN"
and "Search" and came up with nothing.

I don't know anything about command lines.

I really need *complete* instructions on how to format an external
disk connected via USB. Instructions that account for *every* screen I
encounter and *every* key-stroke I will have to make.

Does anything like that exist?

Thanks.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

If you had clicked the ftp.symantec.com link, a download would start for PTEDIT32.zip .

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis...q/utilities/PT...

When it arrives, you unzip the contents of the download, and end up with
"ptedit32.exe" . (Try right-click and Extract for example.) Running ptedit32.exe
gives you the ptedit32 window, which is one of four example programs I took a
screen shot of a while back. You can see an example of a PTEDIT32 screen here.

(When your browser loads this, use the "magnify" feature to zoom in. My browser
cursor has a "+" to signify clicking will zoom in.)

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5544/disks.gif

The purpose of PTEDIT32, is to examine the contents of the primary partition
table, on a hard drive. In Windows, a lot of the older disk setups, will
be MBR based, and make actual use of the MBR.

In the case of GPT disks, which it's possible your Mac disk is a member,
the MBR is loaded with info to prevent accidents on MBR computers (like
your WinXP machine). And I was going to search for such evidence, by
using PTEDIT32. A partition type of "EE" would be evidence of a GPT
prepared disk.

If you want to play with that tool, to display the MBR, you can.

You can overwrite the MBR with PTEDIT32, so you could change all the
partition type values to 00, save, and exit. And then, perhaps after
a reboot, the disk would be more well behaved.

Instead, we'll use DBAN, which is the third "chunk" in this post.

*******

This section, is how you'd use Diskpart to *try* to do the job.

Since I cannot guarantee the results of this, I'll go easy on the details..
In other words, I won't bother with this way of doing it, because I cannot
guarantee the results will be done in one step. While in theory, the
"clean" step will delete the MBR, it may also get hung up

* * Start : Programs : Accessories : Command Prompt
* * diskpart
* * list disk
* * select disk 2 * * * * * * *--- substitute the disk number of the 500GB disk
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Use the output of "list disk" to figure it out
* * clean * * * * * * * * * * *--- This erases the disk we just selected
* * exit
* * (close MSDOS window)

*******

Now, this is more of a "hammer" type solution. The danger with doing
it this way, is it does "too good" a job :-) See the warning in step 3,
for safety.

1) Download DBAN disk eraser.

* *http://www.dban.org/

* * Go to download page.

* *http://www.dban.org/download

* * Click this link on the page.

* * * *"DBAN 2.2.6 Beta for CD-R and DVD-R media.
* * * * (Burn this file to a blank disc and boot the computer with it.
* * * * *Do not unzip this file.)"

* * The link is as follows.

* *https://sourceforge.net/projects/dba....2.6/dban-2..2....

* * You should end up with this file in your downloads directory.

* * dban-2.2.6_i586.iso * *10,598KB * *10/19/2011 6PM

2) Next, you need a CD/DVD burner, and the ability to burn a CD.
* * If you don't have burning software, download Imgburn. Details
* * on the main Imgburn product site are here, as well as a picture
* * of the interface. Imgburn is free as far as I know. It was free
* * when I got it.

* *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgburn

* * You want "Write Image File To Disk", the upper left option.
* * When prompted, point Imgburn at the dban-2.2.6_i586.iso file.
* * Insert a blank CD in your burner, and complete the burning of a CD.
* * This is your "eraser CD", good for erasing any hard drive in the
* * future. It's a very thorough tool, so no traces will be left.

* *http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...screenshot.png

* * Basically, what you need, is a CD/DVD burning program, that knows how
* * to convert an ISO9660 file, into a boot CD. You can also do that with
* * Nero.

3) *Important*

* * *Please read this step*

* * Shut down the computer (windows shutdown menu).
* * Disconnect your 20GB and 40GB drives. You don't want them to be erased.

* * Leave only the 500GB drive connected.

* * DBAN can erase up to 99 disks simultaneously. Users of this tool
* * have made mistakes before, like erasing their "backup" hard drive,
* * by leaving it connected to the computer. Make sure any hard drives
* * or other storage devices you don't want erased, are disconnected
* * before the next step.

4) Make sure the CD drive is in the BIOS boot order, before the hard
* * drive. This is so the DBAN CD will be used for booting the computer.

5) Now, insert the DBAN CD and boot the computer with it.
* * The easiest way to have achieved this, would be to leave the DBAN
* * CD in the CD drive on step (2), and then just do a Windows shutdown,
* * so the CD is ready on the next boot.

6) Assuming DBAN boots, it offers these options.

* * "You may enter these commands at the boot prompt. In each case,
* * *all disks in the computer will be wiped automatically without
* * *confirmation.

* * *dod * * * Wipe all disks with the DoD 5220.22-M method.
* * *dodshort *Wipe all disks with the short DoD 5220.22-M method.. (Default.)
* * *ops2 * * *Wipe all disks with the RCMP TSSIT OPS-II method.
* * *gutmann * Wipe all disks with the Gutmann method.
* * *prng * * *Wipe all disks with the PRNG Stream method.
* * *quick * * Wipe all disks with the Quick Erase method."

* * When you see "boot:", enter the word "quick" as your choice.
* * As far as I know, that's one pass over the 500GB drive. At 100MB/sec
* * erase speed, that might take close to two hours. We wouldn't have to
* * do it this way, if using some other commands, but it takes too long to
* * explain how to use them. The explanation for DBAN is shorter, but the
* * "total project time" is longer.

* * I tested DBAN in a virtual machine, and after entering "quick", it
* * took maybe 30 seconds for the tool to display the name of the disk
* * and progress details of the erasure. It did *not* prompt me to
* * identify a disk to erase. It erased *all* the virtual disks in
* * my VM. That's why you need to unplug the disks you want to keep,
* * or else. There are *no* data recovery options after a DBAN run.
* * Everything is *gone* , guaranteed.

* * Since the program stops at the "Boot:" prompt and waits for
* * that one piece of user input (the erasure type to be run), it's
* * relatively safe if you run the CD by accident. Just don't give it
* * a chance to do anything. Eject the CD and press the reset button,
* * if you want to escape. Don't type "quick" in there, unless you're
* * prepared to erase disk(s). If you had 99 disks connected, it would
* * erase all 99 disks in parallel. All the disk lights would flash
* * 100% brightness, until they were all erased.

7) Eject the CD, shut down, reconnect the 20 and 40GB drives, and
* * give Windows Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) another try after you
* * boot back into Windows.

I don't think this is a 48 bit LBA problem, because the disk is
getting reported as 500GB, rather than 137GB. So after being erased,
it should be possible to make the ~500GB partition.

*******

If you don't like any of this, just say so :-)

Maybe someone else has an easier erasure recipe.

Since you managed to get the 500GB disk connected, my assumption
is that you're comfortable with cabling up of the disk drives,
and have figured out how to do that.

HTH,
* * * Paul

Thanks.

I copied that long post of yours for future reference, because I plan
to get a couple more external drives.(They are usually used and gotten
via Craigslist or eBay). :-)

I all honesty, I'm amazed that these things can be so complicated.
That said, I did what Philo said and deleted the partition in "Disk
Management". It was that easy. Apparently, the first time around I
didn't get all the options for partition size.

It took three hours to format and now I have 465.76GB NTFS to work
with.

Thanks again.

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.