Thursday, January 17, 2013

Deleting GPT Protective Partition using Windows XP

If you've ever tried to reformat a Windows 8 partition using Windows XP you might have come across this strange beast called a "GPT Protective Partition". Windows XP can't reformat such partitions; it's not supported.

To access the disk you'll need to wipe the disk clean using "DiskPart" utility that comes with Windows XP.

WARNING: The following instructions will delete all content in your GPT disk. Backup anything you want to keep first.

Open a Command Prompt and run the command DiskPart. From the DiskPart console:

> list disk
> select disk 1
> clean
> exit

Just a little explanation.
DiskPart list disk command output

The list disk command will let you see all hard disks connected to the machine while select disk tells DiskPart which disk to apply subsequent commands to. Be sure you select the correct disk #! You don't want to wipe the wrong disk.

After this you should be able to create a new partition from Windows Disk Management console, or any 3rd party partition tool.

These instructions were gathered  from the following blog post.

Related posts:

Command line hard disk cloning with gddrescue
Speed up your disk cloning process 
Simple disk cloning with EaseUs Disk Copy

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