Windows 11 is holding my drive hostage

LigTasm

LigTasm

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jul 29, 2011
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I have a 2TB m.2 that had windows 11 installed on it.

All I want to do is format it to be a storage drive, but I can't do anything to it. Disk management can't do it, going into command prompt and using diskpart can't do it, using windows 10/11 installer USB can't do it. It keeps telling me its an EFI file system and I have no management rights. The only section I can touch is the main 1800GB partition, but without the other half dozen mini partitions windows made on it being removed, it can't be used.

Is there any software that can just friggin wipe this thing and be done with it? I've never in my life had such a frustrating time trying to format a drive. I have no idea what sorcery Windows 11 did to this thing but its really, really annoying.
 
pendragon1 said:
try partition magic.
Click to expand...

I don't think this program even exists any more, I tried a few of the "free" programs but they can't even see the partitions besides the main one.

This is nuts, disk management keeps spawning a new copy of the partitions every few seconds. I think I might just snap this pos in half and throw it away.

wat.png
 
LigTasm said:
I don't think this program even exists any more, I tried a few of the "free" programs but they can't even see the partitions besides the main one.

This is nuts, disk management keeps spawning a new copy of the partitions every few seconds. I think I might just snap this pos in half and throw it away.

View attachment 504503
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yeah youre right , i was think of easeus partition master. did you clone this drive to a new one and are now trying to reuse it?
 
pendragon1 said:
yeah youre right , i was think of easeus partition master. did you clone this drive to a new one and are now trying to reuse it?
Click to expand...

I tried the easeus but it doesn't see them.

I did not do anything to this drive, I took it out the machine and installed windows 10 on its partner drive. Then, I put this drive back in so I could move some pictures over. I could not access it at all (permissions), so I booted to it and used an external drive to transfer my stuff. Now the goal is to format this drive to just be storage... and now I'm here.

I'm going to throw it in my laptop thats running linux and try to format it to NTFS there.
 
Last edited:
Plug in a Linux flash drive and nuke it in the boot menu. Are wee sure windows didnt accidently put one of the required boot partitions on a separate drive then everything else? That would be a fun issue to fix.
 
Man that's weird. I've had to go into windows installer to get rid of those before but it seems you already tried that and are still getting denied.
 
cdabc123 said:
Plug in a Linux flash drive and nuke it in the boot menu. Are wee sure windows didnt accidently put one of the required boot partitions on a separate drive then everything else? That would be a fun issue to fix.
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No, it was the only drive at the time thankfully.

learners permit said:
I had one do this(nvme) awhile back. Used bios level drive wipe function of my meg ace main board to zero the drive and it was usable again after that.
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I had thought of this, I dunno if my board has it but this is the first time I considered using it. I think its secure erase?

toast0 said:
Probably don't need to format it NTFS from Linux, but using Linux to nuke the partitions should help. Maybe use hdparm to trim the whole drive if you can?
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Yeah I was able to do it, cleaned the drive and now its just one big partition and I was able to reinstall it and format it/assign it properly.

I have NO IDEA why diskparts clean function did not work, and I couldn't delete the partitions either. I tried it from shift-F10 in the USB installer as well to make sure my OS wasn't interfering.
 
LigTasm said:
No, it was the only drive at the time thankfully.



I had thought of this, I dunno if my board has it but this is the first time I considered using it. I think its secure erase?



Yeah I was able to do it, cleaned the drive and now its just one big partition and I was able to reinstall it and format it/assign it properly.

I have NO IDEA why diskparts clean function did not work, and I couldn't delete the partitions either. I tried it from shift-F10 in the USB installer as well to make sure my OS wasn't interfering.
Click to expand...
Diskpart should have done the job via the "clean" function. But windows can be weird about touching efi partitions
 
Yes secure erase and it lets you pick the level as well. Once over was fine still took some time to complete but not sure how long cuz I went to bed and it finished before morning.
 
wannabeapilot said:
BItlocker might be enabled
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This. Turn off Bitlocker then try diskpart or one of the utility software. I think you may need to disable secure boot as well, but I know Win 11 complains about this.

Or the secure erase in bios. Or there is always the mighty DBAN but unhook any other drives first, lest you end up nuking the wrong drive (been there). https://dban.org/
 
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