formating ex-linux Harddrive

[MikeG]

I have a spare HD that was used for windows, tried red hat on that drive for
6 months, now want to change it back to Windows. My bios sees the HD
correctly, but windows and dos do not see it. Fdisk cannot see it to
partition. I am stuck. Tx Mike

 

[Dino]

I have a spare HD that was used for windows, tried red hat on that drive for
6 months, now want to change it back to Windows. My bios sees the HD
correctly, but windows and dos do not see it. Fdisk cannot see it to
partition. I am stuck. Tx Mike

Boot with the linux install disk and delete the partitions,and then
format with windows fdisk.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have a spare HD that was used for windows, tried red hat on
that drive for 6 months, now want to change it back to Windows.
My bios sees the HD correctly, but windows and dos do not see
it. Fdisk cannot see it to partition. I am stuck.

Wipe the drive with something like clearhdd from
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/clearhdd.htm
and then partition and format it again in dos or Win.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have a spare HD that was used for windows, tried red hat on that drive for
6 months, now want to change it back to Windows. My bios sees the HD
correctly, but windows and dos do not see it. Fdisk cannot see it to
partition. I am stuck. Tx Mike

Fastest way:

Boot Linux, log in as root and do a "cat /dev/zero /dev/hda".
This will overwrite you partition table, MBR, etc. with zeroes.
Linux should also crash/complain pretty fast, but that is o.k.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I have a spare HD that was used for windows, tried red hat on that drive for
6 months, now want to change it back to Windows.

My bios sees the HD correctly,

Name and size and all that but did you enable the BIOS for it?

but windows and dos do not see it.
Fdisk cannot see it to partition.

Signs of not being included in BIOS.