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    Locked out of Hard Drive can't format?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by MOVMX Racer, Oct 6, 2012.

  1. MOVMX Racer

    MOVMX Racer Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hey everybody. I am stumped on this one.

    I have a 2012 Sony Vaio S13P with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Today I upgraded the stock 500GB HDD to a Samsung 830 128GB SSD, and then replaced the DVD drive with a caddy and the original HDD. I now have the 128GB SSD as the primary with Windows 7 HP on it, and the 5000GB is SUPPOSED to be secondary storage for games, movies, etc.

    Windows 7 is still installed on the 500GB HDD; I want it gone along with all partitions.

    I have a little problem though.

    I am trying to nuke the HDD to remove all partitions (2 system partitions, 1 recovery, 1 main), but DBAN won't run on the laptop (I assume because of the SD card slot). It recognizes the flash drive DBAN is on, the SSD, and the HDD, but then when I go to wipe it exits with non-fatal errors.

    Since DBAN wouldn't work, I figured I would at least try formatting the 450GB main partition for now using windows. I right-clicked on the disk and hit format and was told I did not have sufficient privileges to do so. I then tried formatting the partition through DiskPart in the command prompt, and was told that access was denied.

    So now the disk has gone from at least being accessible to sitting as Local Disk (D: ) with no way for me to access it; every time I click it just says D:\ is not accessible, access is denied. I can't take ownership of the drive using the cmd shortcut, I can't format it, nothing.

    What do I do here?
     
    MOVMX Racer, Oct 6, 2012
    #1
  2. JOSEA

    JOSEA NONE

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    I just fixed a very similar issue for a friend with a Live CD for Ubuntu (This CD may come in handy for other issues in the future)
    First go here Desktop | Ubuntu and Download the 32 bit version - Then Create the CD from the .iso file
    Then follow this as I did How to Format a Hard Drive on an Ubuntu Live CD | eHow.com
    To be absolutely safe you could also physically remove the new Samsung and replace it with the 500 GIG drive before booting with the live CD.
    Let us know how this works out!
     
    JOSEA, Oct 6, 2012
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  3. MOVMX Racer

    MOVMX Racer Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well that was easy enough. I just made a bootable USB drive and went into linux. From there it was a breeze to format the drive and delete all the partitions.

    I will definitely keep this live USB!
     
    MOVMX Racer, Oct 6, 2012
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