Format drive from boot - Help?

Havershim

Havershim

New Member
I put Debian 6.0 with the KDE desktop on my Sony VAIO tower, formatting the entire drive, removing Win7Ult accidentally. I want to remove Debian and put 7Ult back on it, but the install manager cannot format the drive, for it is unrecognized by the manager. Is there a formatting program that I can get to load from boot? Any help is welcome. Thanks.
 
Yes as stated above, gparted from (almost) whatever Linux Live CD you have on hand should do the trick.

However, if the windows 7 installer said it isnt able to recognize the drive, then that makes me think you might be seeing 2 possible scenarios here...

1 - The partition table isn't compatible. (meaning, you dont need to format the drive and make NTFS partitions that windows understands, but rather create a new MSDOS style partition table [as opposed to GPT or other].)

2- Its actually a driver issue and you would need to either go into the bios and set the HDD mode to compatability or IDE from AHCI, or you might need to find a driver to upload into the windows installer
 
I've had this issue before, in fact I just ran into it again about a week ago when I went to change one of my spare linux drives to Windoze.
I just use Dban or KillDisk to wipe the drive then Windoze will install.
 
Boot from the windows 7 disc as if you are going to perform an install as normal.

When you get to the part where you select a disk/partition to install to press "Shift + F10". A command prompt should open.

In the command prompt type diskpart and press enter.

When diskpart loads type the command 'list disk"

Normally the HDD will be disk 0. Assuming this is the case use the following commands.

1. select disk 0
2. clean
3. exit (to leave diskpart)
4. exit (to close command prompt.)

You should return to the option to select where to install windows. It should automatically update and give you the option to select the disk.
 
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