FDISKing NTFS partition

[mjolnir]

getting a "write protection error" when trying to delete a 40Gb NTFS partition in FDISK. any ideas on how to fix this?

[DOGG]

If you're trying to do it from windows, that's why

[DOGG]

What i suggest is you do a clean boot. you can get bootdisks from www.bootdisk.com and fdisk it from there. or if you wanna do it from windows, use partition magic. i wouldnt recommend messing around too much with partitions you care about though, as it once screwed my shit up. Albeit it was an older version.

[The Avatar]

you cant delete a ntfs partition in fdisk, if thats what your trying to do. you have to use another program. I have a good one called g-disk if you want.

[scathing]

Originally posted by The Avatar
you cant delete a ntfs partition in fdisk

Wow, then all this time when I've been deleting WinXP partitions that are classified as "non-DOS partitions" in fdisk, I must've been doing something wrong.

Either that or my Windows 98 boot disks are all as buggy as the operating system that created them.

[The Avatar]

sorrreeeee!!!

I was told that you cant delete NTFS(NT) partitions with fdisk. I never tried for myself(because I have no need to), just took what the teacher was telling me as fact.

Full apologies follow..............

[kyuss]

Use the Disk Manager in the Computer Manager console.

[scathing]

Originally posted by The Avatar
I was told that you cant delete NTFS(NT) partitions with fdisk. I never tried for myself(because I have no need to), just took what the teacher was telling me as fact.

Are you in high school?

If there's one thing I learnt in high school, never trust that anything the computing teacher tells you is remotely accurate. Given how slow the teaching environment is to change, it'll probably be a decade before IT teachers have half a clue.

Of course, going around deleting partitions doesn't lend itself to "curiosity testing" like stuffing around with other settings can.

Anyway, for your info (and feel free to try if you ever want to do a clean reformat), you can delete any non-DOS partition in fdisk. There is a menu option so labelled. I used to have a virtual machine for it, but I lost it in a reformat.

[NeXuS]

Yup I even think you can delete ext2 (Linux) partitions through it as well.

[Lord_Phat]

Originally posted by scathing
Wow, then all this time when I've been deleting WinXP partitions that are classified as "non-DOS partitions" in fdisk, I must've been doing something wrong.

Either that or my Windows 98 boot disks are all as buggy as the operating system that created them.

that's prolly cos winxp uses a newer version of ntfs that win98 boot disk may not recognise :D

[NeXuS]

Windows 98 Boot disks wont detect a NTFS partition. FDisk will read it as a non-dos partition and it wont be able to be accesed from the prompt.

NTFS can be read by NT, 2K and XP. 98 was a home product and NTFS wasnt introduced in to Home OS' until XP Home. I think NTFS can be read by Linux and a couple of other systems provided they have the drivers installed.

from memory anyway...correct me if I'm wrong its been a long time since I touched anything pre 2000.