contradictory partition

[Guest Andy Green]

I'm a total newbie to Linux, experimenting with it stand-alone (no other opsys present) on a 6gig hdd.

 

Sometimes I need to use this hdd for other purposes, so then I want to free it up completely. Now I find, with Win98 fdisk, that I can delete the non-DOS partitions, but Linux has also made an extended dos partition, which Win98 fdisk says contains logical drives ... but when I try to delete those, there aren't any there to delete -- contradictory.

 

So: how do I delete this ext dos partition? I've tried " fdisk /mbr " but nothing changes.

[pmpatrick]

If you have Partition Magic on floppies, you can delete and reformat with that. If not, you can download the hard drive utility from the manufacturer's website and do a low level format on the drive which will zero fill every sector of the drive. This wipes the disk completely clean and you will then be able to partition the disk with windows fdisk.

[Guest Andy Green]

Thanks!

[Cannonfodder]

You can also put Mandrake Cd1 in and do an expert install. When you get to the partitioning screen, hit the clear button and then create a new partition that you need. Attempt to format the partition and this will save the new partition.