savak Posted December 8, 2008 Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 HI allI have this external drvie powered from a usb port. When I try to format it through Windows Explorer it gets to 100% then says it cannot complete the format. So I started the system with my XP install disc and formatted the drive succesfully but it also installed XP on it. My question is how can I make the drive a non boot one without reformatting it.ThanksGraeme Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted December 8, 2008 Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 What size is this drive?I have a number of External (USB) drives up to 500GB. All of these formatted OK by the normal process. Last week, I bought two 640GB drives and when I tried to format one of them, I received the same message as you. Even so, the drive that was said to have failed works perfectly OK and still has its full capacity.With the other drive, made two partitions - effectively splitting the drive into two. These partitions also work OK.Note NTFS file system.(Just noticed: Is the drive actually powered from USB or does it have its own power unit? If USB powered then things might be different.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slyke Posted December 8, 2008 Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 Try formatting it with FAT32 file system. There's also Gnome Partition Editor if you're desperate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hb_Kai Posted December 8, 2008 Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 If you don't want your PC to boot from that HDD, you can do this via the BIOS settings.The BIOS program is simple to understand, so you can't go too wrong, unless you're clumsy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
savak Posted December 8, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 Fat32 was not an option from either Explorer or Windows Setup CD.It is powered from the USB socket, I know that some external drives use a spliced cable but thats not the case here.I still refer to my question of is it possible to alter the MBR or whatever to stop the disk booting. This is just a backup device or one for carrying around my data. Its one of the ultra slim ones that is just the thickness of the bare drive.Graeme Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanHo Posted December 8, 2008 Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 Can you not just delete all the files on the drive and thus not give it anything to boot from....? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catgate Posted December 8, 2008 Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 You could have a look at Super Fdisk http://www.ptdd.com/manual2.htmIt will wipe your MBR for you out of DOS. and it can do a lot of shuffling about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slyke Posted December 9, 2008 Report Share Posted December 9, 2008 GNOME Partition Editor will format your drive to just about any filesystem (Including Linux file systems, like ext3), I believe it also allows you to set the MBR on drives. If not, this is doable in the BIOS (Once the HDD is formatted). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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