OS2 World.Com Forum

Subject  :  Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  ray
Date  :  01 May, 2004 on 12:21
I have an old hard drive with OS2/Warp on it. I want to use if for a PC for my son and I would like to reformat it for DOS. Can you help find a way to get rid of OS2?

TIA


Subject  :  Re: Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  icebear
Date  :  01 May, 2004 on 14:29
This is too simple

Just low-level format your HDD and you have a virgin unit

BTW: This is not an OS/2 specific question


Subject  :  Re:Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  ray
Date  :  01 May, 2004 on 15:03
It's not as simple as you might think. I tried that and it told me that I couldn't because of the HPDS format that exists on the drive. I used a 98SE Start-up disk. Can you suggest another way?

Subject  :  Re:Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  os2power
Date  :  01 May, 2004 on 15:19
it's HPFS.......however you should be able to do it with FORMAT command as long as you don't have a drive with ASSIGN, JOIN, or SUBST commands in effect;

you can first remove the partitions with FDISK;

you can use Partition Magic ver. 4 to do the job for you.


ciao, os2power


Subject  :  Re: Yes, it is either FAT16 or HPFS formatted !
Author  :  icebear
Date  :  01 May, 2004 on 19:46
You may need a tool like Partition Magic !?

If you don't have you may find it cheap(er) on eBay !


Subject  :  Re: Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  oli
Date  :  02 May, 2004 on 16:05

sam (01 May, 2004 14:29):
This is too simple

Just low-level format your HDD and you have a virgin unit


Not very useful for people that do not know what LLF is

Basically go to the manufacturer of the HD and go to their download section and get their low level format utility, if the manufacturer does not have one go to the Seagate homepage and download their DOS LLF utility, it works correctly with all drives upto about 20gig regardless of manufacturer and if the drive is more than 20gig it's OK since the bootsector is erased anyway so the drive will look like new for all intents and purposes.

However when low level formatting under dos you will have to go into the BIOS first and turn lba off and then on again after you have formatted the drive, the windows based utilities from manufactureres do not require this step however.


Subject  :  Re:Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  warpcafe warpcafe@yahoo.de
Date  :  02 May, 2004 on 19:00
Folks,

are you kidding? Using Partition Magic to remove a HPFS partition?! That's not true, is it? This is like driving into town for shopping with a 40-ton monster truck! Now, be serious:

All you need to do is run DOS fdisk:
So, if the Win98 CD is bootable: Boot from that CD, select "start from CD", next "start with CD support" (not the actual Win setup that's to say). Then run fdisk (by entering "fdisk"), answer "Y" if it tells you anything about large disks and you're presented with the fdisk main menu.

If you're having more than one disk drive, make sure you have selected the right one (the one that contains the partition to be removed) with option "5". ( If you're having only that one disk, there's no option "5" )
Once the right drive is chosen, select "3" for remove, then "remove non-DOS partition", and enter the number of the partition shown in fdisks table. Done.

If that doesn't help, you can try to run "fdisk /mbr" which (re)creates a new master boot record.

If that doesn't solve the problem, you still can run OS/2 if it's still bootable, press ALT-F1 when the "boot blob" appears in the upper left of the screen (the small square and "OS/2"). Then choose to boot into an OS/2 command prompt, run OS/2's fdisk (by entering "fdisk") and remove the partition.

If that doesn't work either, tell us if you have an OS/2 CD and/or the install floppies, so that we can explain you how to get a bootable OS/2 in order to access (and to remove) the HPFS partition.

If all fails, you can still try to "force corrupted partitioning data" by changing the IDE disk type in BIOS so that it doesn't recognize anything on the drive anymore. Run fdisk to create whatever partition (that'll kill the old partition table), then reboot, enter BIOS and re-set the correct drive type.
Now you're ready to boot DOS, run fdisk on the drive and you're done.

And only if all this fails, you might need a copy of partition magic.

Greetings
Thomas


Subject  :  Re:Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  Radek hajek@vuv.cz
Date  :  03 May, 2004 on 10:22
The old FDISK form DOS5 will do what you need. Start DOS5 from a diskete and run FDISK. Ignore errors reported by FDISK and delete partitions. It will work.
FDISK is a heavenly application it is even able to delete Neanderthal Technology partitions. Where other disk managers give up, FDISK is fighting bravely and defeating hairy monsters with low back-sloped foreheads

Subject  :  Re:Removing OS2 from hard drive
Author  :  BigWarpGuy
Date  :  03 May, 2004 on 19:26
IBM still sells (IIRC) PC-DOS 2000 that can handle large hard drives. One can still buy it at http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=-840&storeId=1&langId=-1&dualCurrId=73&categoryId=1824680&x=14&y=11
. If you want an open source free DOS then one can go with FreeDOS at http://www.freedos.org which also has a fdisk program.
BigWarpGuy
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
OS/2 Warp-ed/eComStation-ed to the very end.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Powered by UltraBoard 2000 <www.ub2k.com>