Why we need to delete GPT protective partition?
In Windows XP Professional, you cannot access or modify GPT disk, but you can convert a GPT disk to MBR by using the clean command in DiskPart, which will delete GPT protective partition and remove all data and partition structures from the disk.
Warning: The steps below will erase all data on the GPT disk, please backup your data first.
- You might see HD Drive in GPT status on Disk Management.
- Go to DOS command line (click on "Start Menu", then "Run", type in "cmd" in textbox, and hit "OK")
- Type in "DiskPart" in command line.
- Type in "list disk" in command line to show all disks in this machine.
- Use "select" to set the focus to the specified partition.
For example "select disk 1". - Use "clean" command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors.
- Go back to Disk Management, you can see GPT disk is "Not Initialized" now.
- Within Disk Management, right click on disk info, choose "Initialize Disk", You can see GPT disk is "Unallocated" now.
- Right click on disk info, choose "New Partition…", follow Partition Wizard and format it. Now you are able to use the disk in Windows XP.
Vibs January 23, 2008
Thanks a ton
NGR January 28, 2008
Hey thanks heaps for that – we were pulling our hair out!
Ezop March 27, 2008
hey thanks you very much!! 🙂
Paul Gu March 29, 2008 — Post Author
No problem…
Beami1 April 22, 2008
Brilliant! Searched for ages, got loads of bullsh*t advice. Been working in IT for 20 years, never heard of diskpart. Thanks, worked a treat!
Callum April 28, 2008
Hi Paul,
Great post. After failing to intitalize disks with Vista (apparently Wetern digital has yet to create software compatible with Vista) I tried to make one GPT. Bad Idea. Disk Part helped me fix it and I will use XP to init from now on. Thanks!
posty April 29, 2008
Diky moc super navod
Thx you very much…
Xman May 20, 2008
Great! weldone! Nice and simple.
Dualboot May 22, 2008
BLESS YOU!!!!
Paul Gu May 25, 2008 — Post Author
Thank you all :D.
Neonic May 25, 2008
Thanks a lot! That was exactly what I needed.
Dmitry Pavlov May 26, 2008
Thank you very much! That’s exactly what I’m looking for! Diskpart – something magic around us 😀
andrej May 29, 2008
uhhhhh…. that hit the spot!
after the end of fdisk with /MBR i really didn’t have to work much with partitions, but after trying MAC on a cetain disk I just didn’t have any option within Vista install to remove GPT tag from disk. After searching the google and after I found countless useles tools and advices (funny, how sata disables any chance of using good old fdisk :-)) this comes as a salvation.
To be true, I am a little embarrased for not knowing diskpart – but in reality I never needed one until now.
many thanks for publishing this!
PeterO June 3, 2008
Brilliant !!! Thank You Thank You Thank You
dot19408 June 5, 2008
w00t!!!
Thanks, this is exactly what I’ve needed!
Roz June 6, 2008
after a TON of website mis information, your fix took me 30 seconds. thank you!!!
Marc June 7, 2008
Hi Paul!!!
You are the best and you’ve made my day!!! – thx again!!
Tons of crap online to figure how to do that none of them are working or you have to buy some third part software!!! thx to bring a light on this unone (actually to me) dos command!
Sincerely yours
Marc
Paul Gu June 10, 2008 — Post Author
No problem all.
Great, a lot of people find this is useful….
Steed June 14, 2008
Amazing! I’ve never heard of diskpart either before. I was able to reformat MAC original HDD’s to NTFS for windows.
Flint Madziya June 17, 2008
This is Amazing and it earned a place in my folder that I call Flint Important. Been in IT for more than ten years i never heard of disk part either Well done & this is cool beans!
Paul June 24, 2008
I have spent the nbest part of an hour trolling around the web trying to find how to sort this problem out.
Found 7 ways, one of which incuded complete linux install, the rest were even worse. Then found this.
Remind me to get you a sainthood 🙂
Thanks v much
Paul
iov June 26, 2008
Thankd a million, saved my day
Moses June 26, 2008
I have a drive that has a 200MB partition that is “GPT Protective Partition” and the rest of the drive is 698.44 GB NTFS which is “Healthy (System, Boot…).
If I use your method will it erase all the data on the 698.44GB partition. I jusdt want to get rid of the GPT Protective Partition without loosing my data.
Thanks
Peter July 1, 2008
Mac OS X Leopard creates a GPT instead of MBR on a connected USB disk. Your tip saved my day, thanks !
Paul Gu July 1, 2008 — Post Author
It seems very powerful tip for many people.
AJ July 1, 2008
Amazing! After searching forums for a half hour and downloading useless apps, I finally found this post. Where have you been all my hard drive’s life?
Kanyball July 2, 2008
will i lose all data from disk after that?
thx
Paul Gu July 2, 2008 — Post Author
Hi Kanyball,
Yes, all data will be erased!! Backup all data in that disk to another disk before you do this.
Kanyball July 3, 2008
ok any way its great tip:)
Jonathan July 3, 2008
Brilliant! Thank you very very much 🙂
Garry Jackson July 18, 2008
hey thankyou very much worked a treat your a God !!!
Julio Moreno July 18, 2008
Thanks for sharing, it really works.
You’re good…..
zoe somebody July 19, 2008
Wow, Thank you so much. I was about to strangle my programmer who I let borrow my new hard drive while he did craziness with his Linux and MAC setup. You saved a life today! 🙂
Gary T July 20, 2008
THANK YOU! Was pulling out my hair trying to find a solution to getting rid of a GPT partition on a drive I’m working on! I owe you one! Thanks again!
Paul Gu July 20, 2008 — Post Author
No problem…. 🙂
Michael G July 20, 2008
THANK YOU!!! I Just bought an external HD and it wasn’t compatible with my XP2 until I found this! I was just about to return it! GREAT RESOURCE!!
MikePetonic July 23, 2008
Gracias, Amigo. Fubared and set up the disk on my Vista machine. Need to swap betwee the Vista and my work XP system. All of the information on teh internets found using the google was pretty much b.s. (as another poster mentioned). This was tres helpful.
Thanks again,
-Mike
Marko July 28, 2008
Thanks man!
I looking a long time how I can delete gpt partition.
Erik July 29, 2008
Very nice post, lots of poor information out there, hopefully a few more links will drive your dead-on instructions to the top!
Gav C August 6, 2008
Thanks heaps for this solution, greatly appreciated!
Harry August 8, 2008
Thank you, thank you, thank you very very much!!!!
Chris August 14, 2008
Great, worked a treat many thanks….Now the prob i have is the disk is coming up with I/O error….. I dont suppose you know of a way to fix these? Or is that the end of my hard drive?
Cheers
Chris
Schaer Hans-Rudolf August 20, 2008
It helped me a lot. Many thanks and greetings from Switzerland.
jackie August 20, 2008
you are so awesome, i bought this 120 gb sata HD for my laptop for 25$ and i couldn’t for the life of me format it, but now i do
thanks
jackie
😉
Paul Gu August 21, 2008 — Post Author
No problem Guys … 🙂
zooty August 25, 2008
Thanks a ton mate. I’ve got a laptop harddrive out in an enclosure connected to my PC and it was doing my head in that I couldn’t install an OS… it only made it worse that 90% of the internet was trying to assure me that you can install vista on a GPT protected partition no worries…. my ass you can…. It totally supports it… My ass it does…
You’re a lifesaver.
phil August 27, 2008
Thanks again and again Mate, Ebayed a 500mb disk to find this GPT thing,
googled the solution in 2 mins.
Learn something new every day i say
phil August 27, 2008
Thanks Mate
Khaled August 29, 2008
Many thanks fo the helpfull advice, thought the new hard disk was for the bin, now its working.
Scott August 29, 2008
YOUR AWSOME!!!
Hoss September 6, 2008
WOW! I would have to say that turned out to be a lot easier than I was expecting! Thanks a million!
Kate September 15, 2008
Done this, but now the disk doesn’t show up as a volume in the top part of disk manager (and still doesn’t show in Windows Explorer). It shows in the bottom part, but i can’t change its drive letter in the bottom part.
I’m dealing with an external hard drive that I reformatted to use with Time Machine for my Mac (unsuccessfully) and now want to go back to using as backup for my Windows XP PC
Donna September 22, 2008
I LOVE YOU!!!! THANK YOU!!!!
Cliff September 23, 2008
Thank you very much…. u r genius
Scotty Van October 7, 2008
Thanks much, that did the trick!
teps October 13, 2008
thanks alot
Oliver Kiss October 15, 2008
Thanks so much! I was using an external drive as my backup disk for my Macbook, but needed something to transfer over files from one PC to another so I had to use it, but came across this error. Worked perfectly! Thanks!
Dude October 16, 2008
Sweet! Thanks Man!
Mark October 19, 2008
Thanks
Patrick October 24, 2008
Like others, I spent a good hour searching the web, pulling out my hair, and talking to myself, looking for an answer. How can such a simple answer be so well-hidden?
I think I want to have your love child, although my girlfriend (and science) might have issues with that.
Suffice to say…thanks.
Duane October 29, 2008
Take all the responses posted above and add a -ditto!!!!-
Kalle October 30, 2008
Thanks a lot!!!
I was ready for the mad-house before I found your tip 🙂
ddmak November 22, 2008
Thank you so much for pointing out the Diskpart and how to use it.
Really really appreciated.
Rico November 22, 2008
You’re my hero. Thanx!
ignacio November 24, 2008
Finally a use for diskpart! Thanks OP.
rolyboy November 28, 2008
thank you so much. worked like a charm
Jymmm December 2, 2008
I had a WD 1TB MyBook connected via FireWire to XP box with the same issue as all the rest (I had been using it under OSX 10.5 without a hitch – of course).
I was about to reach for my http://sysresccd.org/ disc, but was too lazy to reboot and find this post in a google search – worked like a charm – TYVM!!!
I too have been doing M$ for 20+ years and never heard of DISKPART (and I’m a dos/batch file junkie), so I go curious and find this article that gives more detail on the DISKPART command, it’s scripting abilities (scarry thought there), and detailed explanations of the various sub-commands:
A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415
Paul Gu December 2, 2008 — Post Author
Thanks for comments :D, this little tool is not well known to public, but it very powerful and useful.
Russell Garbutt December 3, 2008
Fantastic
Kyle December 3, 2008
Awesome – thanks for the tip. I had never heard of DISKPART before and I thought I was cool. Anyways, you saved me after a Mac format.
Stan December 6, 2008
Let me heap my thanks on top of the rest! Saved a near-new Mac drive (and my bacon!…)
Bob December 10, 2008
Thanks!!! I had a Netgear SC101 go south and I thought the drives went with it. This fixed it!!!
Sundar December 12, 2008
Tats brilliant
John Q December 12, 2008
This certainly is a great find.
Any advice for trying to read the drive, with Win XP, before killin the partition? I am trying to retrieve the data. Thank so much! -John Q
Pat December 14, 2008
Another vote of thanks. Worked to allow me to use a Mac disk in my pc.
Samir December 14, 2008
what a lifesaver!!
Neo December 17, 2008
U the star. Thanks alot.
Boris December 19, 2008
thank you!!!!!!!!
Gerhard W. Moser December 21, 2008
thanky you very much, best answer i got, hope its ok to post it also on my site, http://www24.at.
Brice December 21, 2008
Nice advice! I had tried to use diskpart but I didn’t realize that I needed to ‘clean’ it first. Thanks a ton!
Judd Boyer December 22, 2008
What a Xmas Gift!!! Big thank you!
Joy Aman December 23, 2008
wow, genius, thanks and thanks again
Nothing2Lose January 2, 2009
thanks a lot
dota January 4, 2009
this one is effective good work:)
Paul Gu January 4, 2009 — Post Author
DiskPart is very powerful, be careful this method will erase all data on the disk, so please backup your data first.
Douba January 4, 2009
Thank a lot for helping me to delete GPT partition on my hard disk. Your site is more interesting and admirable to help people in the field of Computer Sciences. Thank again!
Adam January 6, 2009
That made me feel so legit. I want to kiss you right now! Thanks.
Jana January 8, 2009
Many, many thanks for a clear and effective solution
Peter January 10, 2009
Thank you very much. I could not figure this out until I stumbled across your posting. You saved me a lot of headaches.
Ben January 10, 2009
Thank you so much . i love you
Joey January 11, 2009
Thanks! I LOVE YOU! I swear, I’ve tried the most complicated solutions and downloaded a helluva lotta free trial software to try to fix this wretched Ext HD of mine for since Nov. last year. This got it fixed in a jiffy.
Thanks, Paul! Cheers to a year since this post was erm… posted 🙂
Paul Gu January 12, 2009 — Post Author
Thank you all, this post is one year old now, and I’m really happy that it helped many people and it keeps helping more people.
It’s my pleasure to share it :).
Joe January 14, 2009
Awesome. I was stuck with Mac format and thak God I found this site. Done in 10 seconds.
Pro Ton January 14, 2009
Hi,
thanxs for the info: clear and easy to use.
funky January 14, 2009
Thank you………
Willem January 17, 2009
Many thanks
occeng makassar January 27, 2009
thank you for sharing. this tool is simple but amazing.. and you are diamond.
occeng makassar January 27, 2009
thank you. this tool is very simple but amazing. and you paul is a diamond.
----@^@---- January 28, 2009
wow so glad i found this.your the man!!!thought i was gonna have to pitch it…but this worked so good :D..
xHENOx January 28, 2009
Thanks a Bunch.
You now have HOMEBOY status here in The Bronx, NYC.
good stuff.
Alonzo January 30, 2009
Been searching for this fix! Works great!! Thanks a lot!
Nirendra Nagar February 1, 2009
Thanks. I feel such sharing of knowledge is one of the feature of the eutopian socialistic society where knowledge is for everyone and is for free. Internet has done a great job and people like you are are serving a great cause without any greed.
Paul Gu February 1, 2009 — Post Author
I agree, and I’m the big fan of Open Source and sharing information ~~
leon February 2, 2009
amazing, simple and just worked! thx!
Tom February 2, 2009
Thank you!
PaX February 5, 2009
Does not work with USB flash drives!
Cole February 6, 2009
thanks! works like a charm!!!
Paul Gu February 6, 2009 — Post Author
Have you tried this tool under Vista?
Clean it under Vista, then initialize it under XP …
sk February 7, 2009
Thank you so much for the info, it worked for me. I was going nuts thinking that power supply was not sufficient.
Jerry February 16, 2009
Many thanks for this info. Nailed the problem in no time where before, the MS Help just led me round in circles.
Nikitos February 17, 2009
Thanks. You are the best You help me a lot
Paul Gu February 20, 2009 — Post Author
No problem ~~
Andrey February 24, 2009
I consider you to be a Great consultant instead MicroSoft. Thanks a lot. Your advise saves lots of time for me. Good job.
Paul Gu February 24, 2009 — Post Author
Thanks, lol.
armshead March 1, 2009
Since you are going to lose all the data, why not do a Low Level Format. Always works for me and quick too as long as you don’t use the full option and do the who;e disk.
Sebastian March 2, 2009
Thanks alot, I had this external WD disk lying around which my friend(who uses a Mac) had been using. Since Macs want to do everything different I could not get the disk clean! Always this 200mb partition in the way. Your article fixed the problem in 30s, thanks alot!
Paul Gu March 2, 2009 — Post Author
Low Level Format is not good hard drive, needs the utility tool from the disk manufacturer, and it’s slow too …
remember: “Low level format is always of LAST RESORT when you encounter HDD problems.”
armshead March 3, 2009
The so called Low Level Format routine offered on manufacturers support disks is a perfectly acceptable method of returning a disk to its factory state. There is nothing sinister, “bad” or “last resort” about it. The Maxtor program which I used to use
offers an option of “first 300Mb and last 100Mb only” This takes hardly any time at all.
LLF is routinely used by sellers of second hand disks.
The method I always use now uses Paragon Partition Manager Pro and take less than 2 minutes from start to finish, and will work on any disk whatever the format.
Right click on the GPT disk in the list and select “view/edit sectors”
Highlight the first byte and hold down the zero key. The program will zip through the first two blocks in seconds, Click save. Close the program. Re-open it and you have a blank disk.
This is my “first resort”. I’m sorry if it offends Paul Gu but a thread which has attracted 120 posts obviously has plenty of people looking for a simple answer.
<
Paul Gu March 3, 2009 — Post Author
Not at all Armshead, and thanks for sharing your opinion, and it’s good to know this alternative. IMO, LLF is used when the hard disk encounters hardware issue, and LLF does a lot more than DiskPart. DiskPart can still be considered as HLF and it just does the job at this point.
ptc1800 March 3, 2009
Thanks for the awesome tip! Luckily I found your advice before I tried any other way of getting my HDD back to normal.
Chris March 4, 2009
Thanks so much for these instructions!! Cleared my GPT partition that I did not want anymore perfectly as described. Looked all over for instructions that could work in XP Home or XP Pro and this was the best I could find! Thanks!!
BADMONKEY March 4, 2009
thanks…helped alot!!!
Steve March 6, 2009
Thank you so much for the info!!! You rock!!!
SEOFIFE March 6, 2009
thank you saved me pulling out my hair as an external usb drive previously used on a Mac wouldnt allow me to save a recovery file from Acronis that could be accessed by the recovery media. All down to a mac partition left over which remained after formating
robert March 7, 2009
dude, i am number 129 to say Thank You!
Paul Gu March 9, 2009 — Post Author
This quick tip is getting hot :)…
john March 10, 2009
u rock, thanks!
Wolf March 14, 2009
well instructed – THANKS!
NinjaMan March 15, 2009
brother, you saved me! I didn’t know what to do about this issue and you DEFINITELY helped me out! God bless!
JackieParis March 16, 2009
Paul, this was so easy to fix! Thanks a lot for sharing this solution! Peace.
haiying March 17, 2009
I use command, but could not see the partition (i know it is there from Disk management), but could not see from dos command
Paul Gu March 17, 2009 — Post Author
‘list disk’ is to list disks, ‘list partition’ is to list partitions, which command did you use?
Taras March 19, 2009
Thanx! It helped me a lot!
Sarang Kulkarni March 21, 2009
Dude, this is #137, Thank You very much!\
You made my day 🙂
Sarang Kulkarni March 21, 2009
Dude, this is #139, Thank You very much!\
You made my day 🙂
Paul Gu March 21, 2009 — Post Author
It seems Micro$oft has poor documentation… 🙂
Carlos March 24, 2009
This is useful, thanks.
eric Wolter March 24, 2009
thank you, Sir.
Hemingway March 27, 2009
thx, you saved me plenty of time not zero-ing my whole 1.5 TB drive
TJ March 28, 2009
Thank you very much, worked perfectly.
yoyo March 28, 2009
thanks its perfect
Brian B March 31, 2009
Excellent. Thank you.
Mike April 1, 2009
How do i back-up my files if i can’t acess my GPT hard drive under XP?
Paul Gu April 1, 2009 — Post Author
Back up files on the system where you get GPT partition…
Under XP, diskpart and initialize it, then hook the drive back to “GPT” system to copy files back…
Andrew April 1, 2009
A hundred people have said it already – but thanks 🙂 Really helped me out.
George April 5, 2009
I cannot thank you enough. simple and to the point. Thanks again.
colin April 8, 2009
thanks buddy!
Claus Conrad April 9, 2009
Thanks no. 152 🙂
Popescu Geore April 11, 2009
Tanks !! People like you give such value to Internet !!! Really helped me !
Colin Preston April 14, 2009
Thanks dude! My HD was brand new from PC world.
joxus_winner April 16, 2009
thanks for magic ways, so my hdd can be use again
FoXH April 17, 2009
nice…. do you how to remove gpt without wiping all data on the disk? pls help
Paul Gu April 19, 2009 — Post Author
Please see the comment #148
Ony April 20, 2009
I used my LACIE 500GB external HDD in my iMac but unable to use it on my XP Pc.its showing GPT Protective Partition in disk management.
as your suggested method if i run the DISK PART tool and initialize it via “clean” command then does it gonna format my external hdd???
I want to keep all the content stoed in the hdd and use the external HDD in xp – thats my ultimate goal..
Would appreciate your kind suggestion regarding this issue.
Thanks in advance
Paul Gu April 21, 2009 — Post Author
See my comment #148, or you might live with GPT partition.
Toik April 23, 2009
Perfect thanks Paul!
Tried to connect external Hitachi Deskstar 320 Gb to Lenovo T60 via usb. Good tip!
dhiru April 24, 2009
thanks a lot , i’m realy stuck with this gpt format…thanks once agin for this usefull comm.
Roy April 27, 2009
Just spent 30 minutes holding for Seagate and found your site while listening to their awful musak. Whiped out the GPT partition per your instructions while their tech guy was giving me directions on where to send the drive back for repair. Thanks much! –RH
Another Roy April 30, 2009
Like everyone before has said, this was very valublue information and saved a hard drive for me. Thank you for taking the time to post this information!
Paul Gu April 30, 2009 — Post Author
My pleasure to share this tip…
Anton May 4, 2009
Thanks a lot!!! Few words eager to hear!
SteveOH May 8, 2009
Thanks dude…quickest fix ever!
Jorge - E Shop Daddy May 8, 2009
GREAT 🙂
Thank you; it worked great!
Jorge
Harry Barker May 9, 2009
Mr Gu you just saved my day and lost of valuable time!
Bless u!
Niels May 9, 2009
Even though I’m already the 170th person to tell you this, I still think its worth sharing with you that this is one hell of a tip!
Finally “opened” my external hard disc…
Thanks a lot!
Paul Gu May 9, 2009 — Post Author
Thanks all of you, I like the comments 😉
JD Eveland May 11, 2009
I get to be person #172 expressing overabundantly flowing thanks! Bless you again!
Harry B May 11, 2009
My removable usb drive all of a sudden became write protected…
Looked for days for a way to remove the protection…. NADDA.
Until i found this info…. moved the drive to an XP system and was able to recover the drive in under 2 hours!!!
THANX A MILLION!
Ed May 12, 2009
Sweet! I too like the rest of the comments haven’t heard of diskpart. Now I can be cool like you! This was the number 2 Google search for me but the first one I tried! Took all of 20 seconds to bring the drive back to reality!
Andrew Brierley May 12, 2009
Thanks a Million!
What did we do before the internets!
My problem was that I had a drive that was previously used for Mac Time Machine so it came up as GPT Protectve Partiition.
Your solution fixed it in seconds so once again thankyou.
sleeper May 13, 2009
+karma for you!
Mike May 14, 2009
Paul – exactly what I needed, worked like a charm!
Thanks!
Ross J Feickert May 16, 2009
Thank you so much for this solution.
Ramesh Marikhu May 19, 2009
Thanks a lot. I can now use my new drive with no problem. Cooool.
Appreciative May 19, 2009
Thank You!
Rich May 20, 2009
Thank you so very much!
Darryl May 20, 2009
This Blog Tip was first found in my Google
search…and for good reason; It’s answered
many, many prayers…
Keep up the great advice,
Thank-You,
Darryl
Relequestual May 21, 2009
man that was just what i needed. thanks a bundle! 🙂 keep it up
FireDawg May 22, 2009
Thanks Paul. You make the internet what it should be, useful.
The Dawg
Jason May 22, 2009
Thanks a TON! Why can’t Windows Disk Manager just do it the way the Apple one can?
Paul Gu May 24, 2009 — Post Author
I agree …
tanwill May 25, 2009
Hi, your method by far is the best and least complicated ; without installing any software.
I bought a hard disk media player and was formated by vendor with Vista…..and got this GPT problem which was unable to access via XP.
Media Player instruction needed the HD to be reformated to FAT32…. and was unable to access the HD until i got to see your instruction.
Thanks a million !!!
Jersey Guy May 27, 2009
Thanks!!!
Alejandro Romero May 27, 2009
Hi Paul, i’ve just bought a hard disk from a pal, and it was formatted in GPT. Added in google “can’t format sata disk gpt protective partition” y fall into your site. Simple incredible, in just 30 seconds. Now my HD is being formatted to NTFS while i’m writing this text. Thanks Forever!
Pete Vader May 28, 2009
Thanks so much!!! The Force is with you!!!
Dave May 28, 2009
Paul,
Thanks for this tip. I encountered a GPT protected issue when I tried to use my 80gb USB drive with my mac. After the lock, I couldn’t get it to do any thing.
Your tip/technique, saved me from literally tossing out the hard drive, and chalking it up to an ID-10-T error.
Thank you for this!
Ken Kramer May 28, 2009
Thank you very much. This was very helpful!!!
Luce May 28, 2009
Brilliant!! Solved our problem in less than 30 seconds … thank you sooooo much!
J May 29, 2009
Thanks. Precise Instruction.
Jimmy May 31, 2009
Cool, Thanks for the tip!!!
worked perfectly!!
luckyjm June 6, 2009
all 195 thnx’s i think r enough!!!one more from me…great help…u saved me a lot of headache
moviledu June 6, 2009
Thank you a lot !! very useful tip !!
^^
Hector June 8, 2009
Thanks a Million “knowledge is power” after reading this it was so easy…thanksamillion
Alectrona June 8, 2009
Thanks a lot, very useful.
yoon June 8, 2009
HI.. Paul
I have to say Thank you toooooooo ^^
You are the man.
Thank you again…. ^^
Chuck June 9, 2009
Awesome!
THANK YOU!!!
Richan S June 14, 2009
Perfect!! Simple and Useful.
You Safe my harddrive. Thanks you.
Khalid Rauf June 14, 2009
Its realy lesson of the day , Thanks.
mattshardez June 16, 2009
it’s 145am here in florida, i have to be at work at 830 in the morning, and I’ve been trying to get my computer to read this Simpletech external drive for HOURS… then i come across this page, and your solution fixes the problem in UNDER 5 MINS. All i can say is, many many thanks..
jj June 16, 2009
thanks so much! really solved my problem!! 🙂
samlam June 17, 2009
thanks man this helped a lot
Jessie June 17, 2009
Thank you. Not even the tech help at Aluraket could help me figure out why I couldn’t use the harddrive and it is theirs.
Danny June 21, 2009
Very useful! Thank you.
Stefan June 22, 2009
10x man. U r a genius ….
Stuart June 24, 2009
Genius!
Saves me a heap of grief and time!
Cheers
Minter June 28, 2009
Your 210th happy customer! Thank you.
lilgiant June 29, 2009
after i initialized the disk,, the disk become unreadable,,
Joel June 29, 2009
Clear concise instructions that worked. It just doesn’t get any better.
Thanks.
Sam July 1, 2009
Thanks! Helped a lot.
Holden July 4, 2009
thanks a lot. that made it so much easier. It saved me buying a new HDD.
Allister July 5, 2009
Probably no surprises what I’m going to say by now, but thanks so much for the clear, easy instructions! Saved me a lot of headaches 🙂
Paul Dewhurst July 7, 2009
Was About to follow your instructions but before I did I thought I would give my XP install disk a try. My way works as well delete the partition with Windows install. Then just exit install. It changes the partition type to GP then the partition can be deleted with any partition tool. With this method no need to back up whole drive on a multi partition disk
Paul Gu July 7, 2009 — Post Author
This is great ~~ thanks for sharing the tips… 😀
Appreciative July 10, 2009
Thank you very much. Your clear and simple directions saved me a lot of hours of aggrevation. Thank You.
Philo July 10, 2009
Wow! simple yet very effective. this is just what need.
I was about to give up… i could have been one of the I.D. 10 Tees!
among the tipsters yours was the easiest to follow!
Thanks Paul Gu!
James July 12, 2009
Brilliant, worked a treat!! Thank You! 🙂
Raaht July 13, 2009
Thanks, this was really helpful.
Raaht July 13, 2009
Thanks this was really helpful.
emtken July 14, 2009
Thank you. I fortunately did not search for long. Worked like a charm.
Thierry July 14, 2009
Great stuff ! thanks so much for the info; was really struggling with that GPT drive; now it’s all sorted
cheers 🙂
MattyZamz July 14, 2009
Gold. Liquid gold. These instructions are tremendously clear. I wish you had written the rest of the internet.
e89 July 14, 2009
i recently bought a used external hard drive(from a friend using a mac). my pc reads the hard drive but when i used disk management, it says (Healthy GPT Protective Partition). How do i erase the data(if there’s any) without losing my data from my pc??? thx..
Paul Gu July 14, 2009 — Post Author
Please see comment No. 126, or back up your data in the driver first, then fix it and copy back all data to it.
Rich V July 21, 2009
I had never seen this type of partition before. Thank you for the extremely clear and accurate advice! Luckily for me this post came up first in my search, so next to no time lost here. Regards!
rmcd July 25, 2009
I’ve had over 25 years in IT, most of the diddling with DOS, Windows and Mac OS. I had not hear of this utility. Fabulous. Really helpful.
SatisfiedUser July 25, 2009
the procedure worked perfectly! two 750 GB drives converted from Mac to XP. Yet another RAID array is formed. Thanks a bunch. Cheers!
BETEP July 27, 2009
Thanks a ton!
Jon July 27, 2009
Thanks for the tip. I had never heard of DiskPart prior to this and I’m sure glad you could point me in the right direction.
518 July 28, 2009
Paul – Thank you!!!!
Paul Gu July 28, 2009 — Post Author
You are welcome, guys. 🙂
Kevin July 28, 2009
Simple instructions, that fixed the problem
Thank you!
Aunty Alias July 29, 2009
That post has caused a disturbance in the force.
Mike August 3, 2009
Excellent – thanks a million! It solved the problem in about 2 minutes.
John August 4, 2009
I was having a hard time with this WD passport HD. It was giving me GPT protective partition in the disk management in window xp. Everything seens to load fine but it doesnt show in my computer. Thanks to your post, I was able to reformat the hard disk. Thanks again!
Mukesh Joshi (Bhilwara) August 8, 2009
Ammaging,
Grate Knoledge for Windows.
My Problem resolved, Thanks for solution
Pétur August 11, 2009
Thank you soooo much!!
AlNik August 14, 2009
Too easy to be true…
🙂
Thanks a zillion!
David August 15, 2009
Thanks! Just what I’ve been looking for!
David from Hungary
Andrea August 17, 2009
Hi, I have the same trouble after plugging my Toshiba MK1652GSX USB device to a Mac but can not figure out how to backup my data first since it is not displaying at all in any computer…any suggestions?
Paul Gu August 17, 2009 — Post Author
Backup the data to your Mac where you plugged in, then follow the steps above to re-format the disk.
Andrea August 17, 2009
Thanks for your reply, Paul. The thing is it was NOT recognized by that Mac and since then, no PC is recognizing it either…
Sean Brown August 18, 2009
Thank you very much. You gave very clear direction and it worked exactly as expected. I appreciate you taking the time to post this fix.
Kundai August 19, 2009
The fact that there are already 12 people who have found this useful this month (a post created january 2008) just goes to show how important this feat is….many thanks
Kundai
Martin August 19, 2009
Since everyone thanked you, I’ll thanks you too:
Thanks! =)
Ali August 21, 2009
thank you very much
now I can use my external HDD with winxp too.
ninya0704 August 22, 2009
BRAVO!!!:) THUMBS UP!!!:) GREAT JOB:) GODSPEED:)
Sean Wood August 24, 2009
Big thanks for posting this.
Tom August 26, 2009
I had to use your tip on 4 drives i got off ebay. Thanks a ton! nice of you to assist.
Chris August 27, 2009
Nice work Paul, I’m sure plenty more will find this useful.
b August 28, 2009
thanks. i’m a pc guy teaching in a mac environment. i just used this on one drive, i have about 8 more to do so i can use them at home and work.
Peter August 30, 2009
Paul = Rock Star !!!
soully August 30, 2009
Just solved two days of headaches in 2 minutes.
You rule.
ash September 2, 2009
thanks a lot
Gianfranco September 3, 2009
Thanks Paul!!!
It solved the problem in about 2 minutes ….
George Brooks September 4, 2009
Hello there,
I have a problem with my WD external drive, and for some reason, it has this previously unheard of partiton. It prevents me from accessing it in My Computer. I Want/Really need the data on there. Any way this could happen?
naq_saviola September 6, 2009
really helpful..!!
thanks!!!
spruce September 8, 2009
Great job. Thanks for taking the time to give the info.
LMS September 10, 2009
Great article. To the point. Helpful.
dubi01 September 15, 2009
you are the man!!!!
Brendan September 16, 2009
Awesome, thank you very much! 🙂
Paul September 16, 2009
Great tip! I would’ve been lost without it. Thank you!
Terry September 17, 2009
Hay Paul, Thanks for that, I tried everything to get this drive working.
Cheers
Terry
Yako September 21, 2009
Блог очень качественный. Награду бы Вам за него или почетный орден. 🙂
RPM September 21, 2009
Thank you very much! Great tech help.
AM September 23, 2009
Perfect. Thanks!
Qing September 23, 2009
You are my hero!
Thanks.
Don’t know how I got my HDD became GPT yet, but anyway I am very happy to rescue my drive in so simple steps.
Qing
Xiaoxin September 24, 2009
Thanks for this post. Very helpful!
Bharat September 25, 2009
Thanks so much this saved my flash drive, windows was only reading 200MB of my 8GB
bill haleen September 26, 2009
worked perfectly, you da man !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chris H September 29, 2009
Thank you so much my boss had trouble doing this, so i did it found this and fixed it in about 30 secs! Thank you!!
Yan September 29, 2009
Thank you so much.
Sorted all my headache!!!
Robertinoo September 30, 2009
Thank very much. God bless you and take care !
Mark K. October 1, 2009
Nice… super simple and worked!!!
Oskar October 2, 2009
Thanks a million!
Hamilton Burger October 2, 2009
ditto.
donjuan October 5, 2009
damn, you’re good. just solve my problem with this.
i am servicing a client with this problem right now and i can’t go to disk mgmt properties because of this GPT thing.
my warm appreciation for this article. best regards
Harold October 5, 2009
u da man! Thanks
Nan_alice October 6, 2009
Hi, Paul. I’ve got a Vista platform computer – I’ve tried to apply your directions, but it won’t work as it keeps asking me for a disk number. Any ideas on how to solve this for Vista?
Thanks in anticipation,
Paul Gu October 6, 2009 — Post Author
In instruction, it says under XP… make sure you follow it step by step.
Moses October 8, 2009
Great post saved me a trip back to the people I purchased my gbt protected drive from!
Dale October 8, 2009
Google + Your Tip = Win.
Thank you.
Dale
michael October 13, 2009
Absolutely brilliant….i cant thank you enough paul…..you have saved my day. 🙂
Jinny October 13, 2009
You make my day.
Thank you very much. I can use my HDD now.
Mike October 15, 2009
THANK YOU!!!!!
Quickest fix ever, and saved me a 100km round trip to the place of purchase (they said I had to bring it back in!) 🙂
jay October 17, 2009
I can use this “mac” hdd for my PS3!! Thanks alot Paul
digitalmandave October 18, 2009
Thanks very much Paul,Cheers!
Dirk October 24, 2009
Excellent. Thanks, Paul.
Raul October 25, 2009
Thanks
Your instruction was very useful, I format my 500 GB seagate external disk in windows vista and when I went to my office, then my windows XP PC recognize the disk, but I can see it. The disk management tool showed me “GPT label”.
have a nice weekend
Raul
CMF October 25, 2009
Amazing! I purchased an Iomega 2x500mb=1TB UltraMax Desktop Hard Drive on eBay. When I got it, it powered up but my computer wouldn’t assign it a drive. After stumbling around on techie sites with too advanced (for me)directions I found this blog and IT FIXED MY PROBLEM, It now has a drive letter and is formatted correctly and WORKS. Thank you sooooo much!!!
Paul October 28, 2009
Thanks so much. I had apparently formatted by external hard drive as GPT with my Mac and couldn’t figure out why my PC wouldn’t recognize it. This solved the problem.
elmsier420 October 29, 2009
Hei thanx 😀 savd me a lotta trouble
JILL October 30, 2009
OMG it works…thank you so much….
Omar October 30, 2009
Absolutely Fantastic! Works a treat! Thanks! Much Appreciated, Useful to know! 🙂
lex October 30, 2009
Excellent, very helpful indeed!
Sumsky October 31, 2009
Thanx man, very quick and helpful information.
Jon November 1, 2009
I wish I could join you guys but my computer is still screwed. I got this error when trying to reformat, now my hard drive is completely toasted. I’m using Hirens Boot CD v10 and have tried everything. Reseting MBR and sector0, checked disk for errors, etc.
I use the cd bootable mini XP and enter dos. Im able to start diskpart and select and clean the disk. When i return to disk management the wizard pops up and wants me to initialize/convert. I do this but the disk still says “unknown” and to check the system log.
Someone PLEEEASE help me!
qafro November 3, 2009
Your a star !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paul Gu November 4, 2009 — Post Author
Thanks all for great comments….
gamsie November 5, 2009
Thanks dude
ill all the way in South Africa, Johannesburg and u saved me like R.kelly Say…. Thanks Man
CWD November 6, 2009
Frickn SAWEEEEEEETT
Thx
Patrick Allen November 9, 2009
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Val November 10, 2009
It works well. Really practical stuff. Thanks a lot
Emma November 11, 2009
Thank you so much, saved me so much time and trouble!
Manoj November 13, 2009
Excellent! thank you very much…saved lot of time.
God Bless you.
Caio November 14, 2009
Good Job! Good explanation! Well done…
Psifis November 18, 2009
Dear Friend, I will thank you VERY MUCH indeed.
you solve my problem in a few lines!!!!!
I wish to you all the best in this life.
Thank you
Davi November 18, 2009
MANY THANKS!
Worked perfectly!
Lee November 18, 2009
Paul, thanks to you I can use my external disks again.
Narayan November 18, 2009
God Bless You
And Let Satan hug Microsoft!
ahmed November 21, 2009
hi thx man for big info
but i have problem in my usb sony 250 gb flash Drive
windows 7 cant see it and i cant do the steps on my usb
<>
ahmed November 21, 2009
plz help me man
Paul Gu November 21, 2009 — Post Author
If it’s not working in Windows 7, then try it in Windows XP.
republicans.suck November 21, 2009
Thanks for the invaluable tip.
I use macdrive and it locks up the disc after your done with the drive by preventing anything from changing it. I was unable to reinitialize the disk with macdrive then create a MBR through vista disk managment because windows didn’t have the permission to change the format of the disk.
Saved my a55 a lot of support emails to macdrive, who are quite helpless with windows administration.
republicans.suck November 21, 2009
BTW for those of you using vista you don’t need to go to the cmd prompt. just type diskpart in Start Sarch dialogue box.
Christian November 25, 2009
Dude…… YOUR THE MAN!!!!! I’VE NEVER heard of this tool. THANK YOU so much! YOU Rock!
aidin November 26, 2009
you help me aloooooottttt
thanks a million.
DavX November 30, 2009
You don’t know how much that has helped, thanks again and again
So dam simple
Uptown December 4, 2009
Thanks!! The above information worked for me. I was really close to taking my hard drive back to the store. 🙂
john December 4, 2009
Hmm i did not get this to work… are there any special command for clean? like >clean disk:0< ?
When i type \"list disk\" i get DISK, PARTITION and VOLUME. If i type \"list disk\" again i get the disks up, i then \"select:0\" i get a long list of options, but the \"clean\" part i cant get to work..HELP!!
Dave December 5, 2009
A thousand thanks for a most helpful post. Wishing you the happiest of holidays.
Patrick December 7, 2009
Thank you!!!
TK December 8, 2009
This is a Xmas Gift!
My Lacie 500 GB is now back to work!
Thank you very much!
Paul December 9, 2009
Thanks Paul. I was scratching my head on this one, but your solution solved my problem.
Cheers.
Richard H December 12, 2009
Thanks Paul , wiped clean from GPT to like brand new unallocated , now initialized & formatted back to ntfs
successful !!!! now ready to be placed in laptop for windows 7 & XP dual boot at last !!
Happy Xmas Paul Take Care & thankyou for this posting.
stan December 12, 2009
Thank you for the great info
Cheers to you
Henrik Bjerregaard Clausen December 14, 2009
Found your site via a google search. Solved the problem with my Mac formatted disk.
Really helpful, thanks a lot!
Jim Heath December 14, 2009
Just a quick note to say you are, in a word, GREAT!!! So much research, misinformation, etc. Found your article and nailed it in less than one minute. You are the best, dude – keep it up.
thx,
jim
Tasha December 15, 2009
Thank you! I just purchased 2 new hard drives and they were protected and i had no idea how to fix that. I hope you have a wonderful Holiday Season, you deserve it.
Shaun December 15, 2009
Many thanks !
Hector December 16, 2009
You are the best!
Jonathan December 17, 2009
Wow, that worked great, thanks for that!!
Paul December 17, 2009
lol 338th happy diskparter, shame you cant charge for this advice 🙂 think I vaguely recall using this in dos, years ago but thanks for great post!
rt December 18, 2009
Thanks! So my years, and still a great help! I had to ‘google’ to get here, but it was worth a million!
DHH December 21, 2009
The nice thing about good solutions is that they work over and over. Yours was a GOOD solution. Thanks
Clericol December 23, 2009
Thanks a lot for the info. Unbelievable that this isn’t possible with the standard disk management panel.
IronLegend December 24, 2009
Cool stuff, you saved me,The Head of Finance bought a 500GB in the US and i had no idea that there was even a GPT protective patition, You a Legend
John December 29, 2009
Thanks a lot, that took care of it. Very easy when compared to some other sites requiring you to download utilities.
WORKS PERFECT!
joe December 30, 2009
you rock!!! just saved my life 🙂
matalino January 2, 2010
just did what you said then created a logical drive
then poof! problem solved!
thanks!
Paul January 2, 2010
Thanks for the refresher! I diskpart quite awhile ago, but haven’t needed it in awhile. You helped me “remember” the command.
DAVE January 8, 2010
Great post, 7 years in IT and the first time i encountered a gpt. concise, to the point and i learned something new!
Natalia January 8, 2010
Thank you!!!! Very helpful!
Sucaba January 10, 2010
I like to thank you for this post. I almost gave up on the idea of converting this WD “My Passport Studio” 500GB drive GPT formatted, my client purchased. I must admit there are of quirky ideas on how to do the conversion, but it all comes down to DOS. DOS has been and will remain the work horse of the computer world.
Thanks Again
Alex January 14, 2010
Thank you very much… Sometimes the “simplest” things are the most time consuming 🙂
Rachel January 17, 2010
Many thanks to you for sharing your knowledge with all of us. I bought my 500Gb Seagate Sata drive from an individual through craigslist and it was GPT Protected, he has yet to get back with me on how to clear this matter up. Thanks to you I have not lost my money nor my space. God Bless
Ngov Rithy January 20, 2010
What a wonder!
Thanks a million.
I spent ages and lots of effort to solve this problem. And now i’ve solved it. Thank again.
cassio January 20, 2010
Great!!!! thanks a lot!
O.E.F. January 20, 2010
Thanks 🙂
Moresby Guy January 20, 2010
Another happy man! New Free Agent drive was driving me nuts … and now – like all the others above… I’m in business!
mike January 21, 2010
you were a great help! mike
Jason Brown January 22, 2010
You’re a life saver!!!! I had an external drive that had been formatted on a Mac that I then reformatted under Windows 7 but Windows XP refused to see it. Disk Management would see it but wouldn’t let me do anything with it but your page has solved all those problems in one go! Fabulous!!!!! Thanks!!!!!!
Bernald Solano January 23, 2010
man thanks a lot!!!
baosangvu January 25, 2010
thanks you alot. I hope to have more useful ideas from your blog.
rocky January 25, 2010
thanks man. it really help.
Gyuszi January 27, 2010
Hi Paul!
I just bought a 250 gb hard drive,and i can not install vista on it! It says”the selected file is of the GPT partition style”.Any idea how can i fix this? Thanks!
sam January 27, 2010
Hi ! paul
thank you for helping me to delete GPT PARTITION on my hard drive , GOOD JOB.
MANNY!!!!THANK
sam January 28, 2010
HI PAUL.
How can i get chinese words on YOUTUBE
larry January 29, 2010
thank you.
John January 30, 2010
Thanks with DISKPART!!!!!!!! I had no idea.
BartGeek January 30, 2010
Had used diskpart in the past, but was unfamiliar with the ‘clean’ command. Thanks for posting this advice–it saved what little hair I have remaining!
Desperate February 1, 2010
Dude, my friend plugged my WD external hard drive into his mac, which wouldnt recognise it, and now my windows won’t recognise it. How do I clean the disk without deleting all the data? I’m a dummy with computers so if you could put it in as simple a layman’s terms as possible (ie, step by step!!) I would be eternally grateful. I desperately don’t want to lose all the data on the hard drive as it’s all i’ve got. Thanks in advance for any advice you could give me.
Paul Gu February 1, 2010 — Post Author
You need to get the HD back to the system where you you put your data, such as Vista, WIndows 7, or Linux… backup all your data to the local disk. Then you can use the instruction above to re-format the disk if you need to.
Desperate February 2, 2010
Thanks for that, but I don’t understand how I can back it up to the local disk when my computer can’t see it? Any ideas? THANKS!
Paul Gu February 2, 2010 — Post Author
I’m even confused now, where did you put the data in the first place? Are you sure you have data on the disk? what type of data? what system you have used before to put these data?
SLEEPINGDREEMS February 4, 2010
thanks a lot its work i am really very thank full to u guys.
Ron February 5, 2010
FINALLY!!!! The information I needed. Thank you for this post. My “freed” external drive is happily formatting away.
Bhomert February 6, 2010
Thanks bro.. nice tut
Jay February 7, 2010
Holy oh sweet lord oh wow…
Like all the rest here I just want to say thank you, it’s still amazing to me how hard some things can be.
Mac February 10, 2010
SWEET JESUS DAY LORD IN THE MORNING!!!!! I’ve got 4 1TB drives and this one has been giving me a TIME for a week! Like so many on here I got poor info time after time on the net and then stumbled on this! Man thanks and then some!!!!!!!! Good Day from NC!
Jaime February 10, 2010
I did this. Seemed to work but now the drive in question shows as “Unallocated” and when I right click I do not get a format option or a delete partition option. Any ideas?
mikitukka February 11, 2010
@ Jamie – You need to create a new partition.
I have a question: when i do the list disk command only my primary disk is shown. I have 4 disks connected to my PC and none of them show up. I did a RESCAN and still only one disk. grrr.. oh well ill just have to wait untill i get back home to me mac 🙂 Oh and it was the atvUSBcreator that created this partition in the first place.
Tom Smith February 12, 2010
Very nice – thanks.
els February 16, 2010
Thank you so much! So simple and clear. 4 steps and you are done. We need more people like you online!!
Swapnil L Kadam February 17, 2010
Hi Paul,
Thanks yaar…
IT’S WORKS YAAR. AGAIN THANKS FOR SOLUTION.
Rich February 17, 2010
Thanks Paul,
Saved me a trip back across town to plug a drive back into the Mac and erase it!
billandrews77 February 20, 2010
thank you!!! your advice was perfect … could not find this info anywhere else.
dr. gonzo February 25, 2010
thanks a million for sharing this information!
Rutul February 25, 2010
this is great mathod Thanks.
Thank you very much.
CartAir February 25, 2010
Dang! This post has been actively commented for over 2 years! You rock dude! Thanks for the post. You saved me the aggravation. Should be #1 on Google!
Chris February 26, 2010
Spot On! Thanks!
oceanstreet February 27, 2010
I can’t thank you enough, I spent a whole day trying.
Thorbjørn February 28, 2010
Thanks! Worked smoothly! 😀
Fred March 2, 2010
Unfortunately diskpart does not show removable memory (USB memory stick) as a drive so will not allow you to clear GPT on these devices.
As a note, it was a Mac using GUID that created the GPT partition table. If you set the Mac to use MBR rather than GPT it avoids the problem and you can read the key on a Windows XP machine. This was the solution in my particular case.
Cheers.
Paul Gu March 2, 2010 — Post Author
Thanks for sharing 🙂
chirp305 March 3, 2010
hallelujah
hallelujah
hallelujah hallelujah
halle——lujah
lol
Im saved.
Arash March 4, 2010
Thanks that worked great.
razrunlocker March 5, 2010
Thanks a lot. Keep it up!
John March 11, 2010
What can I say but thank you lots.
Yet another reason not to use ex Mac drives 🙂
Chak March 13, 2010
Thanks from Japan! It worked.
Is it possible to read files of “GPT Protective Partition”? Please let us know about it.
Best regards!!
CHak
Chak March 13, 2010
Thanks from Japan! It worked.
Is it possible to read files of \”GPT Protective Partition\”? Please let us know about it.
Best regards!!
CHak
Paul Gu March 14, 2010 — Post Author
You need to connect the disk to system which supports the GPT drive, such as Windows Vista, Windows 7, and MAC…
rao March 15, 2010
Thanks a lot, this help me a lot.
Duran255 March 16, 2010
This was a big help I am glad that I wasn’t the only one who was breaking his head trying to figure this one out. You were a big help thnx.
Nyon March 17, 2010
this is such a life saver. thanks from vistor #405. you just made my day a great one.
Brad March 18, 2010
WOW, you are THE MAN!! I went round and round with my western digital external drive in Windows XP and couldn’t find a solution, until a week later, when I ran across your fix. Thanks a MILLION!! This worked like a charm!
Jeremy March 23, 2010
You are the man!
Thanks
Rey March 27, 2010
Hello. I have a GPT-formatted slave HDD. My XP pro will not detect it, nor will it be accessible in the disk list in diskpart. Any advice on that? thanks in advance.
Quame April 1, 2010
You are a bloody genius,I spent weeks trying to figure this out.Thanks so much.I wonder why disk manufacturers won’t add this trouble shooting.You would think they would because it’s to their benefit.
Alexandra April 2, 2010
Very useful, but i have never used the command line before so I am a little weary of using the script here. Do i just type in
select disk x
then
clear disk x ?
Will that clear whats on the actual computer or just on the ext hdd? Because the latter is all I want! Please reply asap, I need to get this done by tomorrow and noone else on the internet seems to be as idiotic or as cautious as me!
Thanks in advance
Vyce April 2, 2010
It will only clear that HDD. For example, typing “select disk D” and then “Clean disk” will only clean drive D, if you have a disk there.
Paul Gu April 2, 2010 — Post Author
As Vyce mentioned, It will only clear that HDD.
Nanajoth April 4, 2010
Awesome! Thank you so much.
Skipster April 5, 2010
Worked perfectly – Many thanks
Johan Karlsson April 5, 2010
Thanks! This helped me a lot. It was not obvious to use the clean command. I tried to delete the GPT but it did not work. But after reading your article it was very simple to fix it.
Nasir April 6, 2010
That helped a lot. got it done in no time.
Todd April 8, 2010
Thank you! Didn’t know that one!
Stephan Nicholls April 10, 2010
Thanks – quick, easy and worked perfectly
Me me me April 10, 2010
Easy steps to follow, straight to the point and accurate.
Very helpful.
Rick April 12, 2010
WOW, look at all the well deserved comments. Well, like so many others, I found a lot of bad information, mostly people guessing at ways to do it, but DiskPart took all of about 30 seconds. My favorite part is the way it doesn’t ask “Are you sure?”, god help the poor soul that “cleans” his or her boot partition by accident. LOL A true admin tool if ever there was one. Thank you!!! Rick
askme233 April 12, 2010
Wow, Thanks.
Also great to see so many thank yous starting in Jan 2008 and one just posted hours before mine. This is what the web is about and the amount of value you can provide to so many.
also, for any later google searches: HP simplesave disable hpt protective status.
Stouf April 14, 2010
great! excellent ! thanks a lot. Merci.
K.O. April 16, 2010
I’m hoping someone can help me out with my issue. I have an old WD153AA hard drive that came out of a Windows 98 computer. It’s a 15gig…and I wanted to just do a quick transfer of my old data…without having to burn it all to cd’s. Bought an enclosure…and Vista recognizes the drive as a storage device..and gives me the “safely remove hardware” option. However..the drive does not show up in my list of drives in Explorer. In Admin Tools..it shows up..but no drive letter is assigned..and it won’t allow me to edit the drive…or assign a letter to it. Is it possible that XP will recognize the drive..in order for me to get my data off of it? I don’t care about the drive…would just like to retrieve the data. It was a bootable drive in the original computer…and the jumper has been changed to make it a slave. Anyone that can help with this?
Please email to fleabear1028@yahoo.com if you have any advise. Thanks.
K.O. April 16, 2010
I should add that I have a Seagate 1TB external that I have no issues with. A friend was also looking to get his data off his old computer that recently had the motherboard go down. As luck would have it..his drive is a Western Digital also. I had the same problem with his drive…so I’m wondering if it is a Western Digital issue…or something to do with the enclosure not working correctly.
Thanks.
Bryce April 21, 2010
Worked perfectly. But dang that DiskPart utility is scary. One false move…
Riezza April 24, 2010
its work on my ex MAC disk 🙂
Hamid April 27, 2010
Hi
Thanks alot my friend
it was very helpful & life saver!
good luck
Regards
Conny April 28, 2010
Thanks for the info, works like a charm.
Don April 28, 2010
When I type in Diskpart, it only shows the primary drive. which is listed as 0. I thought am supposed to see both drives. All I see is the primary drive. This thing is really bothering me. Its a 500GB WD drive. I want to run installations for some lessons. Thanks.
Dean N April 29, 2010
I believe deleting the GPT Protective partition is about choice. I have both a mac and a pc and i did format my 500gb lg external hard drive into 3 partions-mac os x(journalled), fat 32, and NTSF . All partitions were done on the mac but the NTSF(origally a fat 32 vol from the mac) was reformatted on my pc to ntsf. So everything works fine since my pc runs windows 7(not xp). The GPT partition that shows up on my pc is just 200mb, so no worries; the idea is to be able to use my ext hard disk on both the mac and pc?
what would you advise Paul?
thanks
Dean
Mark April 30, 2010
Outstanding post.
Learn something new every day!
mark
grateful April 30, 2010
Awesome, Thanks. Mac OS X left my external hard disk in GPT and this saved my day! Thanks!!!
Bill May 1, 2010
Right on! Exactly what I was looking for.
dheeraj May 10, 2010
thanx a ton, seriously i thought i messed up with the flash drive , finally found this , great relief, once again thanx
Dan May 13, 2010
Perfect! Exactly the trick I needed to get my new iomega USB drive reformatted to work on XP. Thanks so much!
Singh May 14, 2010
Hi
Thanx, Lots of Thanx my friend
it was very helpful !
good luck and god bless you
Best Regards
RonD May 18, 2010
Another happy person. This worked well.
Thanks heaps…..
Michael May 19, 2010
Works great. Thank you
Dude May 21, 2010
Thanks! Was very confusing and frustrating. Your method worked like a champ!
Fdugenou May 21, 2010
Another very satisfied reader… thanks a lot
vggeli May 23, 2010
Great! This worked for me.
Deghi May 26, 2010
Thanks a lot. All the best!
Pete May 26, 2010
It’s so easy when you know how – thanks, Paul for knowing how, and more thanks for taking the trouble to publish it – you’re a real star.
I was lucky as I had bought a HDD that I found was GPT protected, so I googled for a solution and found this spot straight away – it was almost at the top of the google search, which perhaps reflects the poularity of the site? A fix, freely given, that took under a minute to complete – and otherwise I could have spent hours searching. Brilliant!
kevin lee June 2, 2010
Thanks alot! Saved me headache and time.
Patrick June 3, 2010
Thank you, this was exactly what I was looking for!
JohnnyBoyClub June 4, 2010
To get any help for any command in MS-DOS use “help” and then “(command) /? example: ping /? ”
Be carefull with the commands you don’t know and when you start learning more about computer you should constantly back-up your data with a free software like Dmailer http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html just to get you outside any problems
Oliver June 4, 2010
ACE 450 positive feed backs, helped me out
Hal June 6, 2010
Honestly the best computer tech response I’ve seen in a very, very long time.
Aemil June 7, 2010
Thanks so much. I have never come across this type of partition before, but thanks to this post my hard drive was quickly fixed and in use.
Gui Ambros June 7, 2010
Awesome, worked flawlessly. I wasn’t even aware DISKPART was still part of Win7, after so many years..
Vivek June 18, 2010
Thanks a lot. I was strugling with diskpart and disk management but you steps gave me exact instructions.
Allan Lobrigo June 21, 2010
Thanks a Lot, it workds for me.
Fakeer June 24, 2010
What the hell? DiskPart? Are you serious? How did you ever find out about it? I’ve been fdisking and boot-sectoring HDDs since I was born in the DOS days but this is ridiculous. Btw I got the disk from eBay. I have no idea why so many disks are GPTed at all. Thanks.
CzR512 June 24, 2010
Kudos.
Your instructions saved me a headache and a possible hangover. Thanks again.
JJ June 29, 2010
Will this erase everything on all disks (i.e. C: drive as well as the the external I’m trying to reformat)? Or did I just read it wrong?
Ian June 29, 2010
You rock brotha–thanks!
Aptozi July 1, 2010
I have been hammering a way this thing for two days. I have tried every OS install that there is in order to get this thing formatted and partitioned. Even pulled out some old Dos disks from the 90s trying to Fdisk it. I was in the middle of using Lifeguard Diagnostic from Western Digital it was about half way threw adding zeros (already 3 hours in) when I came across this post. Damm your sweet , fixed in minutes. Your the Man.
squeak July 2, 2010
you rock man !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alan July 4, 2010
Thanks a bunch, worked like a charm.
Monkeybanjo July 5, 2010
Thanks! It works.
Dondi July 7, 2010
Thanks Paul for tip — saved a lot of time and effort.
Chris Jones July 8, 2010
You sir Rock!
I searched for a long time on Western Digital’s website trying to figure out how to remove one of there god damn 200MB protected partitions on my new 500GB external USB drive. Nothing… Absolutely no information on how to recover and remove that damn partition.
Google search and bam! Your awesome advice. I also have never used DiskPart and have been playing with computers for the past 20 years.
Sending good karma your way.
Phantom July 12, 2010
It helped!
Thanks a lot!
Frank Swan July 12, 2010
I too have been looking for a way to remove the protected partition on a Western Digital Passort. What I’m wondering is if the solution you posted will work with XP Home, or does it have to be Professional?
Larry Meza July 13, 2010
AWESOME. You completely simplified this process and saved me hours of further searching. I really appreciate this.
TY,
LM
James Harrison July 14, 2010
Hi Paul. It sounds like you’ve helped a lot of people out. I’m probably less techie than most so still having problems. I have bought an external hard drive with GPT Protection. When I type list disk as suggested I get a list containing my internal hard disk (c drive) and the new disk. Obviously I don’t want to wipe the C drive so how do I select the new drive only?
Thanks
Shekri July 14, 2010
I attempt to perform DiskPart on a USB Flash drive, however, when i type the command it show me the fixed disk only and it does not show the removable disk… my question to you, is there a way to delete the GPT Protective partition from a removable drive (USB Flash drive). your assistant in this matter is greatly appreciated… my e-mail is inclosed above.
best regards,
LK July 15, 2010
Most places are all talk and no action. Your info was the opposite
Kristoffer July 18, 2010
Hi!
I have a very delicate problem.
I installed my disk on win XP, backuped all our photos (wedding and baby …) on it. Wife plugged the drive into her MAC and now the disk is GPT protective and we cannot access the data.
Please, is there any way to recover the data?
I read comment #148, but we cannot access the disk from XP nor the MAC.
Thanks for your help!
Kristoffer
Paul Gu July 18, 2010 — Post Author
Hi Kristoffer,
Try to plug the disk into Windows Vista or Windows 7 to see if you can retrieve the data………….
Smac01 July 22, 2010
Adding to the many many thanks already! Worked within seconds. Thanks for saving me alot of wasted time.
Karl July 22, 2010
30 months after original post, and still a life saver!!
Thank you!!!!!!!
Craig July 25, 2010
fantastic.worked 1st time. Thank you very much
Anas July 27, 2010
YOUR AWSOME!!!
Ana July 27, 2010
Hi all,
I have the same problem as Kristoffer!
I have tried to plug in today my external Seagate hard drive on to an mac laptop and it showed empty!!( I have to mention a haven’t backed up my data, unfortunately)
I gor scared and then I tried to plug it back to my pc(windows xp). It doesn’t see it, only in computer management as a ‘healthy(gpt protective partition). Is there any chance to recover my data? I have only important data there, I would be devastated to loose it all).
Do you think that plug it in to a pc with vista could let me see and retrieve my data?
Many thanks!
Ana
Paul Gu July 27, 2010 — Post Author
Ana,
Plug into any pc with vista or windows 7, and then backup all data on the disk first.
Once you’re done the backup, then follow the instruction and delete the driver and format it in Windows XP. Now you will have non-gpt driver which can be used in both XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
Nader July 30, 2010
thanks a Ton …
Jim August 4, 2010
Bloody fantastic – thanks so much for posting that – solved my problem after 48hrs of going bananas!
Chris August 7, 2010
Top Class quick simple and works Cheers
Norman August 9, 2010
thanks alot.
Rommel August 9, 2010
Thanks a lot partner it did great!!!
Kilburnlad August 9, 2010
I used this on an external USB disk drive. However, I was using Vista running as a virtual machine in VWware on a Mac. When I entered the final ‘clean’ command, Windows instantly closed with a blue error screen. It reported closing down to avoid damage to Windows.
This was a bit worrying at the time but when I restarted Vista (virtual machine) all was well. I went back into Vista’s Disk Management utility and the GPT protective partition had gone. Success, but others might like to know about the blue screen issue.
Kilburnlad August 9, 2010
I used this on an external USB disk drive. However, I was using Vista running as a virtual machine in VWware on a Mac. When I entered the final \’clean\’ command, Windows instantly closed with a blue error screen. It reported closing down to avoid damage to Windows.
This was a bit worrying at the time but when I restarted Vista (virtual machine) all was well. I went back into Vista\’s Disk Management utility and the GPT protective partition had gone. Success, but others might like to know about the blue screen issue.
SurferX August 12, 2010
I follow the steps and work. 30 second’s a its done.
Thanks for the help and information.
Thank’s a lot
________________________________________
Segui os passos conforme descritos e funcionou em 30 segundos.
Muito Obrigado pela ajuda e informação.
Muito Obrigado
SurferX
Leo Huynh August 18, 2010
Wonderful thank you ….
Leo
DameDash2000 August 22, 2010
Plz explain to me via email( in lamens terms how to copy my files prior to formatting my external hard drive. Thank you so much for your assistance.
Mario August 23, 2010
Hi Paul
Fantastic!!!
You Rocks!!!
Thanks
Mario
frenzyamber August 24, 2010
Thanks!
Patrice Blais August 25, 2010
Yeah!
solid procedure.
Thank you.
Ryan August 26, 2010
SWEET! I was using the disk as a Time Machine for my mac, but needed it to be a external hard drive for my PC. This was the only way.
Laurie August 27, 2010
Absolutely BRILLIANT I was going spare, Thanks!!!!!
muhammad nurkholis August 28, 2010
thank you, well well well
Hedi Regaya August 28, 2010
Thanks a lot!
Idiot August 31, 2010
Thanks for mentioning at the beginning of the of the post that this will wipe your drive and the main problem is actually that the drive is from a 64-Bit machine and just will not work in a 32-Bit Machine…. thanks!
FLEMMING JENSEN September 1, 2010
thx a ton.. tho i still had trouble coz im a dummy with pc.. but in combine with this link i was able to do it
http://ss64.com/nt/diskpart.html
William September 1, 2010
Thanks a million…
ckl September 2, 2010
Thanks!
Shoel September 2, 2010
thanks a ton!
freeze September 7, 2010
still useable until now, Thanks!
javier d September 7, 2010
wow! thank you very much!!!
i lost a lot of time trying to find a solution!
thanks!!!
Ben September 7, 2010
I’m glad this is near the top of the google search, clear and efficient instructions. You’re the man!
ronald September 9, 2010
Thanks a lot works perfectly !
corin September 9, 2010
Had a HDD with FreeBSD which had a GPT,
wanted to install FreeBSD with ‘normal’ partition table -> error
tried to override whole disk by creating one big partition (via a linux-system) -> fail
tried to delete all and create an ntfs-partition (to delete it later) -> worked(?) but still gpt on the f***ing disk.
read your tip -> all done!
(your tip is the first hit when googling ‘remove gpt’, i should have tried that a few hours erlier…)
thanks a lot, man! 🙂
/mek September 11, 2010
Thanks from me too! Had a USB drive that was used with digital TV and could not figure out how to wipe that clean to be used again with my XP.
This cleared the problem, but I have to agree with one of the comments that the DiskPart is really scary! 😀
TAZ September 16, 2010
YOU ARE A LIFESAVER!!!!!
Cutco Steak Knives September 16, 2010
Hi,Paul
Worked for me.
Thank you so much!
Alex G September 18, 2010
Great post!!! Really helpfull
Mark September 20, 2010
Thanks a million!
roy September 21, 2010
Thanks!
Lionel September 21, 2010
Thanks, I know this is an older post, but it helped me.
Michael McGahan September 22, 2010
Very helpful! Many thanks
Lorin September 27, 2010
I can see the USB drive under “Computer management/disk management” but when I do a “list disk” it doesn’t show up.
Any ideea?
Thx,
Lorin
Drencha September 28, 2010
Thanks a lot for informacion.
Mohamed Hosni September 30, 2010
i don’t know what to say………..
really ….. thnx alooooooooooooooooot
Etienne Van Roosendael October 5, 2010
Number 521 to state that this one article just saved me two USB drives that got screwed up somehow. Getting my head around the GPT (200Mb) was …….
Anyway thank you for sharing this great tip.
carshagen October 7, 2010
Another success. Great instructions. Bought a Mac only FreeAgent Go drive and am formating it for my Windows PC. Thanks.
Yet Another Guy October 22, 2010
Seriously, thanks for this.
Olly October 23, 2010
I echo what everyone else says and add my comment in the hope that it will help your page get to the top of the search listings for the solution to this particular problem.
Too used to being able to do stuff in the GUI, I should have thought about using a command line tool long ago 🙂
afiat October 24, 2010
thanks a lot bro, it’s help solved my harddisk problom, God Bless you, keep writing
Carol October 24, 2010
Like most stuff here. The example is wrong.
Do I type:
SELECT
SELECT 2
SELECT DISK:2 (the example)
SELECT:2
SELECT DISK2
Paul Gu October 28, 2010 — Post Author
It was display problem…. fix it, it should look good.
Steph November 4, 2010
legend – Worked perfect!
gur November 4, 2010
thank you it works great !!!
Manousos Bouloukakis November 9, 2010
Excellent!!!
Steevo November 10, 2010
Thanks!
Dave November 13, 2010
It definitely works getting rid of the GPT but still no answers on how to make the disk show back up under disk management. It shows up as “unallocated” on the bottom portion but nothing on top.
Thien Vien Dai Dang November 15, 2010
Thank you so much!!!!!!!!
wadadlibeer November 15, 2010
Like someone said Earlier Been working in IT for 15 years never heard of disk part Thank you
rich November 18, 2010
Fantastic , thanks very much , had been puzzleing for hours, sorted in 2 mins
dan November 18, 2010
Thanks so much! now i can backup and breathe easy!
Harry November 20, 2010
That was amazing dude…thank u…
ShariefM November 25, 2010
Amazing, isn’t it…?
How we can find the most effective of solutions in the smallest of places.
Thank you. May there be more like you in this world 🙂
andrew November 26, 2010
Amazing, just amazing. I replaced my laptop hard drive with an SSD. now I have this 320GB hard drive sitting here. so i decided to use it to store movies so i can play it on my PS3 and XBOX 360. I tried formating it to fat32 using (swissknife, easus, partition magic etc) everything I tried would not show up on either of the systems. however it did show up on windows 7 but not windows XP. i was scratching my head FOREVER until…
i stumbled on this website. gave it a quick go, formated to fat32 plugged it into ps3 and xbox360 and TAADAA! works perfectly.
i guess the partitioning programs couldn’t do anything when its locked in GPT. well u know what? EFF GPT 4 LIFE.
kudos to paul. = )
thanks,
andrew
delta9 December 2, 2010
how about same question for windows 7 ultimate x64?
delta9 December 2, 2010
and the answer is exactly the same – fantastic –
*starts installing on new ibis ssd
Thankyou x
STAJAN VJ December 9, 2010
Wow! simple but very effective.Thanks
Prady December 10, 2010
Thank u so much………
ken December 10, 2010
Thank you very much paul. you saved the day for me.
VLion December 12, 2010
The best solution. All other search results lead to boondocks
sam December 13, 2010
PAULY TAT WAS SICK ..THANKS MAN
Jason December 14, 2010
thank you please email if i need help again
Kev December 15, 2010
Thanks!! Worked great!
Dallas December 15, 2010
Purchased a drive on ebay that had a 200mb GPT partition. Like all the others, I tried the usual partition solutions with no success. Fortunately I found your page.
I followed your instructions and within seconds the GPT was gone. Thank you very much!!
Ben Schreiber December 20, 2010
Hi Paul,
you’re da bomb! 🙂
Thank you very much for this great tip!
Greetings from Germany,
Ben
Den December 20, 2010
Great Help.
Thanks
Rodat1 December 26, 2010
GENIUS !!!
t02 December 27, 2010
thanks a lot, its work. good jobs
Stn December 27, 2010
Thank you…. 🙂
David December 27, 2010
And that gentlemen is how we do that…….
Thanks
Alex December 30, 2010
I just want to say a big THANK YOU from Paris and have a wonderful new year ! You saved my Hard Drive Disk 🙂
Paul Gu December 30, 2010 — Post Author
Happy new year to all visitors and appreciate all comments :).
kevin January 5, 2011
This is very simple, straight forward, yet very help.
andy January 8, 2011
thanks a lot dude…
b January 11, 2011
thanks a lot
Nikhil January 19, 2011
Is there any way to read the data of a GPT protective drive on wndows XP??
Balaji January 22, 2011
Thanks a ton,
I got 500GB Mac formatted HDD and got really worried and almost about to return to the sender loosing $$, but u made it my day.
read 100’s on Mac-Os, Softwares, Crackers and even read we cannot use Mac formatted disk in Windows.
u broked their tounge.
I am going to post ur link in all the links where i read
Thanks alot expert.
Balaji January 22, 2011
but i got only 465GB availabe from 500GB, any ways to get the remaining space ?
Paul Gu January 22, 2011 — Post Author
This is normal, those space are reserved for disk partition and file information for the rest of space.
Billy B January 29, 2011
Thank you SOOOOOOOO much, I have bought a couple of drives off CraigsList and sometimes you just don’t know what you are getting. But somewhere in the back of your mind you keep saying ‘there’s got to be an easy way’ and sure enough YOU got it.
Lonk666 February 3, 2011
Cheers…….nice work…..
juantxo February 3, 2011
Thank you!
Rolkis February 6, 2011
Thanks a lot! you’r great!
wayan dedy February 8, 2011
thanks a lot
very helpful & work done
Jess February 11, 2011
Just like everyone else said….Thanks!
cy February 12, 2011
thanks! gpt was driving me crazy!
UsrX February 15, 2011
Thanks alot! 🙂
mark4 February 15, 2011
Brilliant – wish I’d known about this sooner!
Ben February 17, 2011
>>but i got only 465GB availabe from 500GB, any ways to get the remaining space ?
>This is normal, those space are reserved for disk partition and file information for the rest of space.
Actually it’s how Windows (and Mac OSX 10.5 and earlier) reports. HDD manufacturer (and OSX 10.6) says 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (1000x1000x1000) = “metric” GB but OS says 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes (1024x1024x1024 or 2^30) = “binary” GB. So a “500GB” HDD is really 500/1.073741824 = 465. (There is a little bit of space reserved for partition and file information but not 7%!).
Terabyte drives are now almost 10% over-reported, since a binary TB = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes.
dapoppa February 19, 2011
Picked up a new Toshiba 500 GB external drive for cheap quite a while back and just found out it was for mac. Too late to return. Could not use on my xp nor w7 machines. Your advice cleaned gpt off the drive and allowed me to give it a drive letter and format it for use on my pc computers. Thanks for the advice and your help. I am moving files to it as I type. You have been bookmarked. Great job, thanks again!
Jakon February 21, 2011
Bam, worked like a harm. Thx
zameen February 24, 2011
thank you it worked great ! gotta love DOS !!
Dominic March 20, 2011
thanks, that worked perfectly!!
was also wondering how to delete the GPT on a USB memory stick…
dore March 20, 2011
whew!!!
All cheers to this forum!
I know it’s been years since but i’m also not that much of a tech warrior.
Like everyone else…did everything to no avail until i saw this fix.
Thanks a whole lot!
Josh March 22, 2011
Great! Add another “Thank you” to the list;-) Just the right solution. Worked from Windows 7
Popo March 26, 2011
Thank you soooo much !!!!!
No Longer Frustrated March 30, 2011
Wow, thank you. You just kept me from pulling all of my hair out.
Warren March 31, 2011
Thanks dude!
Sherif Maged March 31, 2011
Thank A lot
Russell April 1, 2011
Thanks a lot. Saved a LOT of time.
Russell
Russell April 1, 2011
Thanks a lot.
Saved me a LOT of heart ache…
jeremy April 6, 2011
i have to say thanks a lot i tried a few programs that did not work and this was a lot easier
josiah April 8, 2011
ugh. i cant pass the
type “diskpart” part;
it says…. “diskpart” is not recognised as an internal or external command….
how?
X0B1Nn1 April 9, 2011
Thanks so much man i have a 2 tb drive that i installed Ubuntu on and it did a gpt style format
Chardnsx April 10, 2011
Wow! You rock man! This solved my problem with my 2TB WD drive..
Chris April 11, 2011
Excellent Dude, you are Awesome!!!
Thanks for the Help!
Mahesh April 15, 2011
Thanks Dude;
Nice Info. in simple language.
Finally April 16, 2011
This really worked for me!
I cannot even start to thank you.
I was quite lost before this information came toward me.
Again, thank you so, so much!
Regs,
Finally
bgn April 17, 2011
excellent man. such a simple thing can do this
wazzup April 18, 2011
Great posting, diskpart who would of thought it would be that easy! You learn and learn, but can never learn it all )
Jonni April 26, 2011
Many thanks!
I see that you posted your solution 3 years ago and it looks it helped many people beside me.
StuartJP April 30, 2011
Thanks very much indeed! Worked perfectly.
Aljo May 4, 2011
!LEGEND!
Worked 1st time. Thankyou for taking the time to help. Much appreciated.
Mark May 5, 2011
Spot on, worked pefectly, thanks 🙂
katan May 6, 2011
Thank u very much indeed !!!
tieQ May 6, 2011
Thanks a lot for this one. Cheers!
GanteDawg May 7, 2011
Big Ole thanks for this. Been struggling with an external drive on my OSX for the last week.
Wilson May 11, 2011
Great help Sir. Thanks.
JeffTroiano May 17, 2011
Man, YOU ARE THE ONE! Thanls for you USEFULL Help.
It saved my life!
THANKS A LOT
admin May 25, 2011
Thanks Dan … You rock man … it worked first time around!
I bow to your fearless awesomeness ……. 🙂
Shabu Gonsalviz June 1, 2011
Thanks a lot….
lesvosevents.com June 1, 2011
Thanks for you help
may June 1, 2011
Your posting is useful and helpful. Many of us will definitely assert that everything in your site is nice. Should you keep on posting helpful articles on your online site, often there is a higher possibility that lots of viewers will visit your web page.
Land For Sale
skyricho June 10, 2011
This worked. Thanks
tuyk June 16, 2011
thank you so much!
B2 June 17, 2011
Thank you, God bless you
Joseph June 18, 2011
Great advice. It needs a couple extra steps, but you gave the most important procedure to clean my new Hitachi external drive.
Ennis June 19, 2011
Thanx!
rafiq June 21, 2011
THANKS FOR UR INFORMATION
Sreekanth June 21, 2011
Thanks you very very much
EmilynFostanes June 23, 2011
This is awesome! Thank you very much!
I bought an external 250 GB SATA HD. I reformatted it using Windows 7. Alas, my office laptop with OS XP couldn’t show it. I just followed your suggestion above and it worked!
How can I forget this blog and DiskPart? 😀
Have a good one!
Konstantine June 25, 2011
THANK YOU!
Irshad ali June 27, 2011
commandncode.blogspot.com
Johnny B July 2, 2011
Thanks for this awesome tip, I’ve never heard about the diskpart. Thank you! 🙂
Annonymous July 2, 2011
Thanks A Lot,
Your A Lifesaver
Best Regards,
Annoymous
NU July 13, 2011
Thank you so much! Was screaming my head off at the computer lol
you post is a saviour July 18, 2011
Thanks alot for your post.
I took out the 250GB HD from my macbook pro and wanted to use it on windows XP, and your post is the solution to remove the GPT protective partition.
daily deals July 19, 2011
Hey! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading through this post reminds me of my previous room mate! He always kept chatting about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thank you for sharing!
z July 23, 2011
test
Marcos Hernandez July 24, 2011
This helped me get access to a disk that was previously formatted for Mac. Thank you very much!!!
kozel23 July 27, 2011
http://en.kioskea.net/download/done/download-127-hp-usb-disk-storage-format-tool
works perfect with USB flash drives – easy to use 🙂
Thankful August 1, 2011
Thank you very much.
You are very helpful!!!!
1 tb external hard drive mafia August 8, 2011
WOW!! I cant believe i once paid someone to remove this GPT thing,i feel so stupid!LOL
William August 8, 2011
Amazing, i just follow the instructions n finally i did it. great! thanks so much for your sharing.
selimjan August 10, 2011
big man 😀
Simona August 11, 2011
Thank you very much for saving my sanity!!!
This should be published in every manual…
All the best!
Navid August 13, 2011
thanks, it works.
Alek August 14, 2011
or if you don’t use windows
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Javier August 14, 2011
THANK YOU!
I wasted so many hours with a low level format for nothing…
This is a true solution!
Jamil Khan August 16, 2011
Thanks Alot Dear………. Very Help Full for Learners THANKS
SENTHIL August 17, 2011
thanks a lot 4 u r info
Denis August 19, 2011
First article I found: quick and easy solution. THANKS!!!!!!
Cents August 25, 2011
You rock! I thought my drive was DOA but this fixed it.
Robert August 26, 2011
Worked so easily! What a great fix
Les August 27, 2011
Merseyside Many thanks worked a treat.
CJ August 28, 2011
Thanks so much! – as others have said quick, easy, fast.
Too much bs advice on the net…this is not!
SpyUC August 31, 2011
Great Help!
Straight forward, fast and best of all…. IT WORKS!
Rens Dutch September 2, 2011
Thanks, worked like a charm.
santosh kumar punna September 8, 2011
Thanks Dude its worked
Rick September 11, 2011
Awesome how to, is there anything higher than A+?, I had a 500 GB drive stuck with GUID format and this fixed it and got rid of it. thank you so much, now it is sitting in laptop doing it’s job, Thanks to you.
james September 12, 2011
Hi, Thanks for the appreciation.
Marshall September 14, 2011
Brilliant…. Very much appreciated. Now I just need to figure out how to format the disk in standard FAT32…. Cheers.
Paul Gu September 18, 2011 — Post Author
really appreciate your feedback……..
Prabir Dangol September 19, 2011
I need badly . I got Solution. Thank You Very very Much…
Prabir
Nepal
sivakumar September 24, 2011
working.Very thanks
RobIsThankful September 25, 2011
You have literally years worth of thanks on this page. I will add mine to that, you have saved my computer 🙂
wp September 27, 2011
Thanks man it work for me and i didn’t even have to put that much work into it
Jakester October 2, 2011
Yo The Man…I used to teach DOS at San Diego City College back in the day. Go figure I would forget such a important command now 25 years later.
Aftab October 11, 2011
Thank you boss.
sig October 11, 2011
thanx heaps – too easy to delete a ‘gpt protective partition’ on my usb drive.
to marshall ( 59 ) above, just use windows disk management to format as a ntfs partition, then download ‘guiformat.exe’ to reformat as fat32.
Carl October 19, 2011
After loking at unworkable (and questionable solutions on the ‘net this simply works. Thanks you so much.
Cheers,
Sajjad October 30, 2011
Thanks a lot… it is really saves a lot of time… Thanks Thanks..
Rich November 9, 2011
Great, thanks….
Daryl November 20, 2011
This had me stumped too. The drive was in a Linux NAS, then went into a Win7 machine where it worked fine. Then I wanted to use it in an XP machine and that’s when I found out it it had this mysterious GPT protected partition and I couldn’t access it or do anything with it.
This was such a simple solution.
Thanks!
Amir November 22, 2011
THANK YOU VERY MUCH….. YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!
Shagi November 24, 2011
Geart – this saved my day
so simple and clean… 🙂
Cheers
Sarah November 24, 2011
Thank you SO much!!! Been searching the internet for hours!! Mom gave me her old WD Passport external drive and all of the options were greyed out in Disk Manager, couldn’t format or assign a drive letter or anything, only “help” was listed – which was no help at all. It showed the drive as “GPT Protective Partition.” Thought I was going to have to get rid of the drive and then found your post! Thank you so much!!!! (You’d think the WD folks would post this on their site.)
sandeep November 27, 2011
Thanks !!!!!!, Great work, I m working in IT sector for 15 yrs but never heard of diskpart—– great job
@MatoSoup November 29, 2011
I agree with the other 682 people who were here before me. THANKS!
freeze December 1, 2011
this article helping me twice !!! ^_^
Rob December 1, 2011
Like the other 685 or so totally still works and it helped me twice as well
Rafael Oliver December 5, 2011
Thanks a lot. I did exactly like you told here and ererything is okay now. I could reset my Sata HD. THANKS!
sebestianyourey December 7, 2011
thanks for your timely help. i realy thanks to you
Roshan December 8, 2011
Stumbled here after a google search and wanted to thank you immensely for the great and easy tutorial. Helped me convert 3 HD to NTFS and make use of them.
Great job! Thanks again.
satya December 9, 2011
Thanks alot. I thought to buy new one. It saves me 125 bucks. …. My Harddisk is working again..
Thank you very much
Gavin B December 16, 2011
You Are A STAR!!!
Going on for 5 Years and your ADVICE is still the hottest I have ever needed to use.
Live Long and Prosper!
Regards
Gavin
Victor M December 24, 2011
Thanks! Realy saved me some time 🙂
Miro December 26, 2011
Thanks wery much! Ďakujem, trapi som sa s diskom 2 dnik, kým som objavil tento návod. Ďakujem!
Liviu December 30, 2011
What can i do if I wanted to install Windows 7,I erased the partition,then I realised it’s a GPT partition/ Now I can’t install anything….
Paul Gu December 30, 2011 — Post Author
If you erased the partition, then you should not have GPT partition, I believe you didn’t erase it.
Jae Kim January 3, 2012
ThAnK yOu!
Now can use an old laptop hardrive as a giant USB drive.
Dunk January 8, 2012
Sweet… thanks dude…. didn’t even know of that app.
Sean Lane January 12, 2012
I had given up hope. Thanx the Hard Drive is now working!!!!!
Sean
South Africa
Kazi Maksud January 22, 2012
Thank u.
sonjubaba January 24, 2012
thanx…………….
R. Wing January 24, 2012
This may be an old thread but it solved my problem. New drive is now formatting and seen in Explorer. Thank you.
mac January 25, 2012
graet super super super super super super help
tttttt hhhhhh aaaaa nnnn kkkkk ssssss
thnx
JoePeach January 26, 2012
Perfect! I thank You.
Jack Mc.Goff February 4, 2012
Here it is in the year 2012 and this helped me too. Thank you so much….
Amr Gad February 7, 2012
thanks..
Simple and Effective
Haroldo Macêdo February 13, 2012
Thanks!
Ranjith February 14, 2012
Thanks for the post.
Its worked for me. Thanks for the help.
Chris February 18, 2012
I pulled out a lot of hair until I found your words of wisdom.
Thank you very much.
Regards
Chris
arthet February 22, 2012
Thanks
I really thanks you
I’m so sad about this problem cause i’m using windows 7 and datas from my friend was on windows XP
May God Bless You….
Thanks
Lucas February 25, 2012
Super good, thank you!
Eathan Gleiner March 1, 2012
Ive been dealing with this GPT protective crap for many hours even the guy at Seagate was completely useless. Thank you so much for this post. If only I had looked it up at 9 this morning.
Amit March 5, 2012
thanks a lot
Decebal March 8, 2012
Hi,
I have connected an external USB HDD, WD My Book, but the Device Manager cannot seen it.
I tried also with DiskPart, ‘list disk’, without succesful – is not listed.
I verified on Device Manager and the driver is OK:
– under Disk drives: WD My Book USB Drive is display
– under WD Drives Management devices, WD SES device is display well
Also the WD Drive Manager, WD DataLifeguard Diagnostic, Hard Disk Sentinel that USB HDD, only the Windows don’t assign the drive letters 🙁
Do you have any idea how I can make it to work?
Thanks a lot
Kurt March 9, 2012
Amazing how many people are still getting help from this article after all this time. Many thanks!
Jean-Philippe March 13, 2012
Thanks a lot, I got a disk with this stupid GPT format, now I can check it…
Martin (Norway) March 13, 2012
Great! Thank you for publishing this tutorial. Helped me rescue a 500GB iOmega USB hard-drive.
venkat March 14, 2012
I ran Clean command , its giving below errow;
The selected disk is neccessary to the operation of your computer, and may not
be cleaned.
Please help me ….
uling noha March 18, 2012
if the disk already contains data if the data will be lost?
Paul Gu March 18, 2012 — Post Author
Yes, all data will be lost, copy data to another disk/usb drive before you do this.
MAC March 19, 2012
hi
if any one lose data of this stupid gpt resin don’t worrie.
just do one thing first change disk format with Paul Gu method.
then use icare data recovery software with partition recovery option.
i hope u will get all data back.
i solved my problem after one month search with this method.
i get back my data almost 100%.
try it
thanks.
David March 19, 2012
You need to “select” another disk, you cant clean your c: drive because windows would stop working? which I am guessing your doing wrong.
Thanks Paul Gu, you just saved me a headache.
Nikolai March 21, 2012
Than you! Needed a quick fix for that and it worked like magic. Excellent manual!
Leven March 22, 2012
Thx m8 you are awsome 😉
Mahesh Ambalia March 24, 2012
Great dear thanks a lot for great solution.
roman March 25, 2012
Saved the day. THANK YOU
wali March 26, 2012
thanks a lot
mty17 March 28, 2012
Thanks a bunch! This is by far the fastest/easiest way to remove the GPT partition. Thank you thank you thanks!
Muhammad Idrees March 29, 2012
Many many thanks, I worked 100%
RandEE April 3, 2012
THANKS!!!!
Sid April 4, 2012
Thanks! This worked perfectly!
Ethan Shock April 10, 2012
THANK YOU SO MUCH. DiskPart FTW. Stuff like this is why people hate windows
rf April 11, 2012
thank you thank you
Paul April 12, 2012
Thanks so much! Trying to salvage an older computer for church and this helped me out.
vishal chib April 13, 2012
Thanks a tons!! really sort out my problem.
Rick April 22, 2012
Dude you absolutely rock and know rocks I am one when it comes to computers
Ryan April 23, 2012
So freakin ridiculous, man. I was ready to scrap the thing. Thank you so much.
Chadsta April 23, 2012
Man… worked like a charm. Much appreciated.
George Andah April 24, 2012
Thanks, it works.
HitKing April 26, 2012
What a helpful post. Thank you so much!
Tom April 27, 2012
Yep, this advice is still needed and accurate.
n@nandj.me.uk April 28, 2012
It was a shock to see Windows Vista Disk Mgmt couldn’t do anything (no options) with the disk. Still great advice. Many thanks.
ashraf April 28, 2012
thanks man
lobloco April 29, 2012
Thnks a bunch. Saved me headaches.
Abdul April 29, 2012
Thank you very very very much!
Kurt May 3, 2012
Thank you very much, solved my Problem perfectly
henri May 5, 2012
Awesome! just what I needed!
gogonutsss May 6, 2012
THANKSSS!
Phil May 10, 2012
omg awesome, it worked like magic, I send you my gratefull thanks for this most excellent fix
Prakash Kumar Patra May 14, 2012
WELL DONE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
VERY GOOD SOLUTIONS
Anthony May 14, 2012
What a fantastic & amazing article which was published 06Jan2008!!!! Well done Paul.
JJMcquire May 15, 2012
I use both windows XP and MacOSX snow leopard. Thanks
Him May 17, 2012
Cheers mate, worked for me.
Problem was formatted portable disk in Win 7 for NTFS file system. Plug it to XP and disk didn’t mount.
Anyway cheers for the clear instruction!
Gshyam May 17, 2012
Thank
Stephen May 22, 2012
Brilliant….still useful 4 years later because of the Mrs with her pesky Mac…..grrrrrr
Mike May 27, 2012
This is just simply brilliant. You save me from many days of trying to resolve this. You ROCK.
Raj May 27, 2012
Hi!
Words are not enough to thank you…in fact, one of fake service engineers told that my disk is useless and he asked for less than one dollar..amazingly you helped me save a lot of hard earned money.
Appidemic May 28, 2012
Still helping. Thanks a lot.
Ken Schiff May 30, 2012
Just want to say “ditto” to all the above.
Thales Macchione May 30, 2012
Thank you very much!
Jim Khor May 30, 2012
U are great, this helps me to solve my External USB drive from wiping Mac HFS+ type (became GPT) and unable to re-create partition on XP (found no way to workaround).
Thank you so much ^_^
keith June 7, 2012
Thank you SO much! This was driving me crazy! Win7 could see the drive but XP couldn’t. Now they both can!
I wish there was a way to do this non-destructively, but at least this works.
ddd June 8, 2012
Y.O.U A.R.E T.H.E B.E.S.T !
Riddim36 June 9, 2012
Thank you so much, I have been down a dozen routes – all of them ineffective – You are a True Professional ! You have solved my problem ! Thanks Again.
Peter June 18, 2012
Great! Simple yet effective! Couldn’t be better! 😉
Bob June 21, 2012
Absolutely the right solution, wish I found it sooner!
James Nishimuta June 28, 2012
u are amazing. I hope you got a killer job and are a billionarie now
Irwan July 3, 2012
Thanks, you help me formatted my wrong formatted hd from linux, its safe me a lot of time.but i still feel sorry for my lost files (even windows give in first)
anyway, a lot of thanks from me.
Javier July 4, 2012
Nice. It worked like a charm.
Paul July 4, 2012
Just goes to PROVE – KNOWLEDGE is POWERFUL. If ALL of us with positive comments here paid you just 10% of the wasted time and money spent on crap ‘solutions’ I suspect you would have a nice little sum to ‘play’ with. AND it goes on and on and on….obviously this is a BIG issue and so few ‘techs’ know how to deal with it?
You are a true Internet ‘freedom fighter’…step up and get your www MEDAL.
THANKS 🙂
Ilyas July 7, 2012
Thank you so much. I agree with the above post, I am surprised how many ‘techies’ have no idea.
I lent my external HD to a friend who uses an Apple Mac. Once he finished with it,formatted it from his PC. This is when my problems started. I use Windows and now it works on windows PC.
Nguyễn Thế Bình July 8, 2012
It worked. Thank you so muck!
Nó chạy tốt. Cảm ơn bạn rất nhiều! (Vietnamese – Tiếng Việt)
alif July 13, 2012
tg. it’s help fuel 🙂
Ronald Liew July 13, 2012
Thank you so so so much. I believe you already have great and wonderful comments. Though i did not spent much time looking the solution to my problem, you have save so much of my time figuring it out. I wish God will bless you with whatever you want in life be it love, wealth and health. Cheers man. You are truly a life saver.
anonymous internet denizen July 20, 2012
Thanks! Worked great.
trevor August 6, 2012
When I do it, it doesn’t say initialize disc? anyhelp out there. It is a 320 gig toshiba hdd out of a 6 month old laptop.stuck in that gtp format. want to wipe it and empty it.
Abdur Rahman August 7, 2012
Thank you very much dear for support
Thanks a lot
jiri August 11, 2012
great ! many thanks, saved my life.
Caverdog August 11, 2012
You sir, are a wonderful human being. Quick, easy to follow instructions. Thanks.
peja August 14, 2012
Thanks Paul… Let’s drink with me someday…
Chris Okafor August 16, 2012
Thank you Paul thought i lost the external hard drive, the easy instruction saved me a lot of money. thanks again
Kevin August 20, 2012
Thanks alot ! i’ve searched the solution for days, now found this ! Aprechiate your work ! thanks again !
Thamas August 22, 2012
You are the MAN! worked perfectly and lucky I found this within minutes because from user’s comment, it took some of them days and weeks to figure this out.
Steve August 30, 2012
How could I not comment on this fix!
Thanks mate as this was driving me crazy……….
Magnus Bonnevier August 31, 2012
Indeed i want to thank you for this priceless tip. 🙂
Good day to you sir.
nadeem September 7, 2012
Thank you so much.
chippy September 9, 2012
Paul, I add my sincere thanks. Like many others, I found numerous other dead ends before discovering your clear and simple solution.
Zufri Ibrahim January 30, 2013
Thankyou very much 🙂
Microeyes January 31, 2013
but i lost nearly 100 gb of space 🙁
Microeyes January 31, 2013
including my recovery data… lost my win 8 os, drivers, etc wit tat 100 gb 🙁 :'(
Paul Gu January 31, 2013 — Post Author
Sorry to hear that, always backup data first before proceed this…
celio February 1, 2013
I love you so much!
raaj Samgi February 3, 2013
Thank you very muchhhhhhhhhhh! Love you man! 🙂 sorry I’m just happy after looking for the right method for 4 days!
Paul Pranskaitis February 5, 2013
best tip ever…..thanks
MUSIK February 9, 2013
very thanks 🙂
hans February 9, 2013
may GOD Bless you
Thanks a ton
Steve February 18, 2013
very good thanks
فرشيد نظري February 23, 2013
tnx alot
خيلي نوكرتيم داش
ivu March 3, 2013
WOW! thanks
Ran March 5, 2013
Thnx man!!! Great post! very helpful!!!
Pierfrancesco March 5, 2013
Thanks from Italy! You helped me a lot , nice job
AK March 7, 2013
Thanks a lot for the help
Jonny Hungary March 9, 2013
Tnx! You are a Mage!
This is the fastest solution for all LIDL (GE) distributed MEDION AKOYA half-PC to reorganize. You save to we a very disgousting IT-Service pay-2-ground-sucking.
Many tanks!
Johny Eastern
Graeme Scott March 27, 2013
Many thanks. It was a great help in replacing the crap that Windows 8 is, with Win7.
James Kazoob March 28, 2013
Wow, thanks for this, I could not figure out why WIn7 would not install after I removed 8 from a brand new HP laptop. Too bad you can’t just convert the GPT partition only, I wanted to keep the recovery partitions shipped with the drive. Oh well, not possible, nuked the other partitions and converted the HD to MBR. Works fine now 🙂
ಪ್ರವೀಣ್ March 30, 2013
ಧನ್ಯವಾದಗಳು
prakash April 2, 2013
I want to remove preloaded windows 8 in my HP laptop.
Great. Works for me. Thank a lot.
Andrew Panziear April 2, 2013
Thanks, this worked a treat!
Spanky April 2, 2013
Screwed up my Acomdata USB drive by formatting with windows 8… Couldn’t read / format it with XP until I found this…
Forgot most of the DOS commands…
Two thumbs and two big toes up!
Thanks…
Jay April 3, 2013
Thank you so much! I have spent HOURS looking for this fix!
sakraforte April 12, 2013
thank you so much
Claus Schlueter April 16, 2013
thanks very much! this allows me to use my 1Tb USB3 drive which I formatted with Ubuntu as NTFS (??)
Saravanan April 17, 2013
wowwww !!
Unbelievable…
dave April 21, 2013
Armshead sounds angry.
Paul saved the day and Armshead got upset.
Devin April 24, 2013
Not the first to say this but, thanks a ton. Ben cussing at this thing all day you may have saved its life.
Richard May 6, 2013
You’re genius!!!
It’s fu****g awesome!!!
Thanks a lot…
FenoCool May 22, 2013
THANKS A TON OF TONS OF TONS OF TONS!!!
Daryl June 20, 2013
Hello!!!
After doing the diskpart using windows Xp, can I install Windows 7 on the Hard drive?? Thanks.
PLEASE REPLY………………..
🙂
chester June 20, 2013
thanks a mill worked like a boom
vincent June 25, 2013
hi sir,
can i do this in the windows xp by connecting the fresh copy of hd without the os and remove the gpt and can install windows please reply me sir pls
my mail id vincentjayakumar.a@gmail.com
Graham Bethell June 28, 2013
yes
retrostar July 20, 2013
saved me hours, instead of using some obscure third-party disk partitioning software, worked a charm.
cheers 😀
DarkStyle July 21, 2013
Paul – U r it man!!!! There is so much bs out there on line from people who like pretending they kno what they’re talkin about. AND from Tech Sites that take you thru useless rigoramo instead of gettin straight to it.
Thx 2 u it took me no more than 30 secs!
marsho August 9, 2013
thanks sir
SK August 11, 2013
Thank you.
Precise and concise.
Perfect.
Diego Raphael August 12, 2013
Man…
I <3 U
You saved the day of a Brazilian guy that wouldn't know what to do without your tip. *-*
mwangala August 21, 2013
This works better and faster than magic. Thanks a zillion.
Leon September 2, 2013
OMFG!!!!!!
This post from 2008. helped me to solve my problem now in 2013. This is the solution how to install windows 7 to windows 8 machine on hdd which is gpt protected. I installed windows 7 to asus x55a. and this is the only solution that helped me. stay away from any other shit.
brill September 13, 2013
just to add – brilliant :). Even after all these years… Thank you
Anoymous September 13, 2013
Thank you very for this helpful insight. I worked very well!
Matt September 18, 2013
Great advice!
Thanks so much. I have used this to salvage an external harddrive that wouldn’t “unmount” properly from my Mac (due to disconnecting it improperly).
Lost the data on the drive (have a backup), but at least i can use the drive again.
Thanks for the tip. I love DOS.
Rob October 2, 2013
Had a 64GB Verbatim Pinstribe USB thumb drive that had previously been used on Mac. Windows 8 saw it as only 200MB, absolutely noting could be done. Read this article, and Awesome. Had to actually run DiskPart in Win8, rather than in XP under VMware, as DiskPart in XP couldn’t even see the drive at all. After doing the ‘clean’ under Win8, reconnected the drive to XP in VMware, and could nowsee the disk in Disk Management, unpartitioned. Just set it up as a primary partition, formatted it, and bingo it works on both OS’s. Brilliant!!!
Rob October 2, 2013
Had a 64GB Verbatim Pinstripe USB thumb drive that had previously been used on Mac. Windows 8 saw it as only 200MB, absolutely noting could be done. Read this article, and Awesome. Had to actually run DiskPart in Win8, rather than in XP under VMware, as DiskPart in XP couldn’t even see the drive at all. After doing the ‘clean’ under Win8, reconnected the drive to XP in VMware, and could nowsee the disk in Disk Management, unpartitioned. Just set it up as a primary partition, formatted it, and bingo it works on both OS’s. Brilliant!!!
Lucky The Cat October 17, 2013
Thanks for curing the pain in my ass
tareq October 23, 2013
what about the recovery partition in the laptop ? is it going to be erased to ?
and if so …. i would like to keep the recovery partition. what should i do ?
Geoff October 25, 2013
Thanks so much for this solution. It worked like a dream for me!
reyy October 29, 2013
Thanx for ur help..most appreciated
Aakash December 11, 2013
After executing clean command the data will also be deleted?
Gautier December 12, 2013
Merci beaucoup ! C’est une réussite totale !
Paul Gu December 15, 2013 — Post Author
It would erase everything on your laptop, I wouldn’t do that……..
auris December 20, 2013
thanks x 1000000 you are genius 🙂
Dax December 28, 2013
Thank you Paul very much. The only solution that really works after all this time. Had the problem with installing Windows 7 to new Acer laptop that had Linpus OS installed. All partitions were GPT and were preventing the install, but after I have found your tip everything worked out as it should. Just brilliant!
NTx December 30, 2013
Nice one!
You saved me from the a*sh*les of WD and Seagate, who are seemingly clueless nowadays on how to create a SIMPLE external HDD without all the INSANE and additional B*LLSH*T software add-ons, that NO ONE NEEDS.
I just buy a hard drive for being a hard drive. If I wanted b*llsh!t, chaos and endless headaches, then I would watch the Jerry Springer show instead. Mostly, I hate over-the-top software developers anyway, who do not know how to keep things simple, useful and functional.
I do not need a bunch of extra artwork, if I am buying a basic hard drive, now do I? Maybe WD and Seagate are more interested in flaunting their pathetic egos rather than just making good quality hard drives. Whatever..
Well friend, YOU saved the DAY! Your post kept me from wasting $100!! So keep up the good work, eh!
Jilmax February 5, 2014
Thanks..
You saved me a2tb drive.
joe February 8, 2014
Thank you – a long night of frustration before i found your excellent guide. 😀
Martin arvidsson February 27, 2014
Hi I have a slightly diffrent question.
Im using win 8.1 64bit.
How do i backup a gpt-protected drive when i cant access it?
WBurks April 17, 2014
These instructions are still helping in 2014. I was able to reformat an external drive for some much needed storage. Thank you !
Hladeira May 8, 2014
Great Post.
Saved my 2 16GB’s USB Drives that ios manage to ruin.
Thank you!
R'Kennedy June 9, 2014
Thanks very much, i just rekindled a samsung m3 500 gig portable drive, this would only show the start up box on certain computers so forth disabling its use. Being a student that was annoying. as i had to carry a spare and transfer info that way. 2 computers at home 1 accepted one did not, after this process i was able to use both . Thanks again
bogey62 June 26, 2014
Thank you. Very helpful.
marc July 16, 2014
Cannot Initialize disk, (its grayed out) and come up with an error message DATA ERROR: cyclic redundancy check. Thanks.
Ivan July 22, 2014
THANK YOU, You saved my day, week, month, no LIFE :- )
Khadar August 20, 2014
THANKS FROM ETHIOPIA
travel umroh jakarta August 23, 2014
I just like the helpful information you supply for your
articles. I’ll bookmark your blog and take a look at again here frequently.
I’m slightly sure I’ll be told many new stuff proper right here!
Best of luck for the next!
Wirenutt September 30, 2014
Bought two 160GB IDE HDDs from Newegg.com for an old Dell PC we are using as a file & print server, & they were apparently refurbs. One worked fine, installed XP Pro on it, the other wouldn’t show up, except in disk management as a drive with all the options grayed out.
Fired up Hiren’s Boot CD 10.0 and ran Easus partition manager which showed me it’s a GPT disk. Your advice here was the only solution of many I tried that worked. I knew about DiskPart, but forgot what it was called and what it did. Many thanks!
Mikey lg October 4, 2014
OMG thanks so much… even after WD said it couldn’t be done…. again THANK YOU
weight loss tips for teens October 10, 2014
It is identified that weight-loss surgery tends to make
it a lot more hard for the physique to absorb nutrients.
HaZZarDaZZle October 14, 2014
Worked like a charm. Thanks!
John Davis October 25, 2014
Thanks..
You saved my 2 tb drive and a lot of frustration.
Attila Vicha October 30, 2014
Thanks!
You save my day.
Nealstar November 12, 2014
I have been working in IT for 20 years and have never seen a GPT Protective Partition which seems to be the problem on a client’s HP 2000 laptop with Windows 8.1 that wouldn’t restore from the recovery partition or the factory recovery disks. I thought the hard drive had possibly failed, but installing it in one of my desktops, found it to be healthy, but protected. I did a search, immediately found your site and followed your instructions. Will now reinstall it in the laptop, hold my mouth just right and hope for the best. Thank you for being so generous with your knowledge.
Carlito December 6, 2014
A million thanks! it worked!!
anon December 14, 2014
Thanks! Worked when formatting a hard drive that was previously in a Mac.
Nikos December 27, 2014
Thank you a ton. You made my life easier.
Kamal December 28, 2014
Good.. Tq
Mario K January 1, 2015
THE BEST AND ONLY USEFULL SOLUTION FOUND !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just bought today an 500 GB 2.5 drive that came from an Macbook so I needed to convert it to NTFS. Lost 4+ hours for “partition manager solution includind EASEUS and other….” Thanks to this post I converted my drive to NTFS !!!! THE BEST SOLUTION EVER !
Big V January 2, 2015
Yes!
mk January 10, 2015
Worked like a charm!!! Thanks 1000!
eskrim February 6, 2015
thx a million
Sean February 16, 2015
So many thanks, well have another, been looking for days.
Thanks
Sean February 16, 2015
So many thanks, well have another, been looking for days.
Tthhaannkkss
julius March 4, 2015
thank you 😀
RAHUL March 10, 2015
i had done it, but when I finally created “New simple volume” it ends with “system cannot find the file specified”.
Please help me.
I m on win7
and used this usb as bootable linux.
samuvel March 10, 2015
Thank’s
Antonios March 30, 2015
Thanks brother !!! Very good and simple !
Linn April 2, 2015
Thanks a lot
Nii Kofi * April 18, 2015
Comment
Slave April 29, 2015
this is wonderfully works, i have never really heard of disk part before but surely it helps a lot! a lot of thanks to you… may God bless you!!!
Pditty May 22, 2015
Thanks a million….. works in windows 8.1…
the analyzer May 25, 2015
Thanks for the post. Still helpful in 2015
Nero James May 31, 2015
Thank you very much! That’s exactly just what I need!!! Diskpart – something magical around us…
Lolyman June 23, 2015
THANKS A LOT MAN! THIS GUIDE WAS REALLY HELPFUL TO ME!!
KAPIL K. DEV August 8, 2015
THANKS
Matt August 15, 2015
7 years old and still excellent advice. works perfect. thanks for posting
ABCDGF August 20, 2015
Thanks for this information it saved me a lot of time,
Thanks again a 1000 x.
Babu Joseph September 4, 2015
Thanks very much. Your instructions were so simple and straight forward, I am very pleased with it. Got my Disk formatted. Cheers
Marius October 6, 2015
nice work …
ivan November 28, 2015
Thanks. A simple sollution.
Carl August 2, 2016
http://www.eightforums.com/drivers-hardware/58149-windows-8-1-2-ssd-windows-need-delete-one.html
topgundcp
Senior Member
San Jose – California
Posts : 2,846
8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04×64 MintMate17x64
OK, I see. From the screen shot, I see disk 1 was intialized as dynamic disk. From dispart command, try to convert it back to basic first:
1.diskpart
2.select disk 1
3.convert basic
4.select disk 1
5.list partition
6.select partition 1
7.delete partition override
8.repeat step 6 & 7 for partition 2, 3 etc…
Assis Meny August 30, 2016
Thank you Sir
Helped me alot
God Bless you!
SK October 7, 2016
Thanks a lot
wizkid18 November 2, 2016
Where is your donate Button?
It is to me worth something !!!
Thanks
adrian February 21, 2017
Really thanks man! World needs more people like You!
george March 6, 2017
Where is your donate Button?
Thanks a lot Sir 🙂
maydueravo August 2, 2017
thank you…God Bless You
David Shultz August 27, 2017
This is so ‘what the Doctor Ordered’ Worked like a charm!
John Nozum September 1, 2017
I thank you VERY MUCH for this article! This now allows me to use the newer Western Digital external hard drives even with good old Xp. I am a computer technician, and I sometimes have to back up a customer’s data before “setting off a bunch of dynamite” (reformatting the customer’s internal HD). My old work external HD may be around 10 years old, and it may soon possibly give up the ghost. Thank you VERY MUCH!
From John Nozum
Owner of Knoz’em Computers, LLC
Milan April 16, 2018
thanks, you saved my day
Michaela Vergin June 3, 2018
Thanks for this information.This is second time i am reading this.
Carel Schilp August 28, 2018
Hello Paul,
Thanks a lot for the procedure, it worked perfectly.
Regards, Carl from Holland.
Paul Gu February 25, 2020 — Post Author
Thank you all for the support, and hope this continues to benefit you all.
cris December 27, 2020
nice.. thank you so much this process are still working..
Nizam January 25, 2022
Worked for me too. Thanks a lot!
Yoav May 1, 2022
Amazing, so many years later and it is still relevant!
Saved me from re-installing my OS, thanks.
andrewfelixrose September 26, 2022
Lol this just saved me like 14 years later. Thanks bud.
Paul Gu January 3, 2024 — Post Author
I can’t believe this is still helping others!