old laptop drive for PVR ?

[mrite]

Hi My question is this. I have a 160 GB drive from my old Dell laptop, I have it in a hard drive enclosure when I tried to format it I thought I would get my 160 GB back but only have 9.76Gb free I would like to use this drive for a PVR on my fta system but cant seem to get rid of the Dell stuff on it So if anybody has some hints or ideas on how i can accomplish this I would appreciate your help.
Thanks
Mrite

 

[primestar31]

Hi My question is this. I have a 160 GB drive from my old Dell laptop, I have it in a hard drive enclosure when I tried to format it I thought I would get my 160 GB back but only have 9.76Gb free I would like to use this drive for a PVR on my fta system but cant seem to get rid of the Dell stuff on it So if anybody has some hints or ideas on how i can accomplish this I would appreciate your help.
Thanks
Mrite

You need to remove all the original partitions, and repartition it first, full-size to get all the space on it, THEN format it. You probably only managed to format the much smaller recovery partition, which just has the original basic load of Windows on it.

If you hook it to a Windows pc running XP, right-click "My Computer" icon, then click on "Manage" in the menu. Then, click on "Disk Management" and it'll list your disks.

Make SURE you know what disk you are working with next. Disk "0" (C:\) is your boot-up disk, so LEAVE IT ALONE! Look at the one above you are talking about, and right click and blow away all the partitions. Then, right-click and re-partition it, then format it.

Any questions, and there's hundreds of Google links that''ll help you.

 

[TheForce]

Depending on the Dell partition, you may not be able to delete those using conventional windows partition software utility. Not even Partition Magic will delet or change the Dell special partitions. There are some tools I have used that will quickly revert your hard drive back to factory defaults; give you a complete erase of all data and reset all switches.

Do a Google search for "Ultimate Boot CD" and then use the utility called MHDD to reset the drive to factory defaults. This dumps the boot sector and other Dell proprietary partitions as well. You end up with the drive as it was new from the factory with nothing on it.

Now, having told you that, I have to advise against using a laptop hard drive in any DVR service. These small drives aren't really designed for this type of service. Even if you do have a 7200 RPM drive, the I/O may not be fast enough and the continuous write that DVR service does will probably cause quick failure of these drives. This is just my opinion so give it a try and prove me wrong. I'd be fascinated if you have success with it. Some of the most recent 2.5" drives may stand a better chance but older ones were, IMO, just too slow for video DVR service.