How to format drive with partitions

Question

I have a drive with 3 partitions - Vista, Ubuntu and just storage. I'm used to creating and formatting partitions.

However, I have never formatted a entire drive with partitions. Any pointers to resources would be great.

Again I wish to format the entire drive removing the partitions.

EDIT: The Vista parition is corrupt and not recoverable.

Answer 1

It depends on what you're using to format it, but in most cases

1. Delete the old partitions in your favorite drive management tool -- Windows' Disk Management console, or GParted, etc.
2. Create new partitions as desired.
3. Format the new partitions with whatever filesystems are needed.

Answer 2

If your goal is to erase the entire drive and remove the partition table, you can just use DBAN over it.

If you want to keep the partitions but format each as a specific file system, gparted can help you with that.

If you plan on instantly installing a new OS to the entire drive, most OS installers will allow you to select the entire drive as the target, and they will get rid of the partitions before installing.

Answer 3

EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition is a FREE ALL-IN-ONE partition solution and disk management utility. It allows you to extend partition (especially for system drive), manage disk space easily, settle low disk space problem under Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 (Only for 32 bit, figure out Windows 32 bit or 64 bit). The most popular hard disk management functions are brought together with powerful data protection including: Partition Manager, Partition Recovery Wizard and Disk & Partition Copy Wizard. Top Benefits: FREE FOR HOME USERS. No Adware and Toolbar. Extend system partition to maximize computer performance. Partition Manager utility for better hard disk management and computer performance maximization. New! Partition Recovery Wizard to perform PC disaster recovery to save data. Copy Wizard to copy partition or migrate entire hard disk to another without Windows system reinstallation.

Answer 4

you can use Active@ Kill Disk, it will take care of it and delete all partitions on the drive.

Active@ Kill Disk is freeware.