Can't Delete Volume

[Terry Smerling]

I used Vista's Disk Management to reduce the size the existing partition on
my second hard drive (Disk 1). Apparently, I succeeded because my file
manager reports the partition in fact was reduced in size. However, Vista's
Disk Management reports that the partition has not been reduced.
Ironically, Disk Management also indicates I cannot further reduce the
drive. Further, the Delete Volume option in Disk Management is grayed out
and unavailable. At this point, I would simply like to delete the existing
partition and refomat the drive. Any suggestions how I can do this?

 

[Timothy Davis [MSFT]]

If you are looking to wipe all partitions from the physical drive, you can
do this from the command line utility diskpart.

You have to be *very* careful when doing this, as a mistake could mean you
wiped the wrong drive.

The documentation for Diskpart.exe is in the Windows Help documentation, or
you can do a web search for info.

Example:

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.0.6001
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: BUZZLEGUM

DISKPART> list disk [Lists the physical disks on your system]

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ---------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 75 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 932 GB 0 B

DISKPART> sel disk 1 [Selects Disk 1, which is my USB hard drive]

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list part [Lists the partitions on the drive I have selected (disk
1)]

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 932 GB 32 KB

DISKPART>

At this point, if you feel you have the correct drive selected, you can use
the 'clean' command. 'Clean' will wipe the drive you have selected using
the 'sel drive' command. You can then exit diskpart, and go back into disk
management.

Remember to backup any important data from your computer. Even the most
experienced of us have accidentaly wiped the wrong drive.

Also, I would assume you can do the above in the disk manager UI, but since
I am more of a command line guy, this is the only help I can give you.