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I screwed up using a friend's external HDD and installed Ubuntu on it for my new PC. I can still run it from a disk but I have no idea how to completely wipe the HDD of Ubuntu. Windows won't even recognize the device any more.

Yi Jiang
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user39558
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4 Answers4

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In windows, use "disk management" to reformat the drive.
Note: You will lose all data stored on the drive.

Community
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gerg
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If you have Windows installed on the same drive run fixmbr first! Then remove Linux partitions (including swap), as mentioned before.

Ubuntu Linux replaces MBR record with its own boot loader. If you just delete linux partitions you'll get unbootable drive. To fix it just boot from any DOS or Windows live disk and run fixmbr c:.

Sergey
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All you need is Windows7 installation disk, put it in, restart your computer, then set the boot priority from BIOS setting CD or Flash-Drive.

When Win7 installation comes up, choose repair. Then choose repair this computer with recovery tool, click next and choose command prompt.

Enter this command bootRec.exe /fixmbr and reboot your PC. Go to control panel -> System and Security -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> choose Disk Management (on your left). You will see your computer partitions, delete your UBUNTU SERVER partition by right click -> delete Volume. After it is deleted you will have new disk space.

Do not format, instead reinstall ubuntu or Linux if you wish and you will have a 100% fresh copy.

v2r
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bemonolit
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remove that parition using any disk-formatting tool, im not sure the windows disk-formatting tool will detect ext3/ext4 paritions or not, In that case use any third party disk formatting tools like Partition Magic or Paragon Partition Manager.

Rajesh Pantula
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