If you had clicked the ftp.symantec.com link, a download would start for PTEDIT32.zip .
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/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 disknumber of the 500GB disk
Use the output of "list disk" to figure it out
clean <--- This erasesthe 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/dban/files/dban/dban-2.2.6/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/wikipedia/en/0/0a/ImgBurn_screenshot.png
Basically, what you need, is a CD/DVD burning program, that knowshow
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 haveto
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, butthe
"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
