You almost erased the wrong drive (drive 2) because you haven't select the right drive
Diskpart
list disk (take note of the drive number (n) you want to erase)
Select disk n (replace the n with the drive number above)
clean
convert gpt
Format fs=ntfs quick
exit
Is your BIOS up to date?
mHz - No I didn't. MiniTool Partition Wizard lists the drives with a "1" base. Every other partition tool uses a "0" base. So you have to subtract 1 from the disk number in MiniTool to get the DISKPART disk number. So disk 3 in MiniTool is disk 2 in DISKPART.
I forget if my BIOS is up to date. If it's not, it's only one version behind. I remember that the latest BIOS fixes an issue that I don't have on my system so I saw no reason to risk an update. I'm not a consistent believer in this saying, but for the moment, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it."
Navy - Yep, understood. Just curious - why do you prefer MiniTool to DISKPART for wiping partitions on a disk?
Last edited by thornev; 21 Nov 2021 at 17:59.
Because it will not prevent you from erasing the disk with the system partition on it. It will just give you a warning asking you if that is really what you want to do. As long as you are certain that it is the 860 EVO drive that you are erasing, then yes, you are sure that is what you want to do.
I booted from DISK 1 in DISKPART (I selected DISK 1 but disk 0 got booted). So you're right that I chose disk 2 in DISKPART. That's what I wanted - the 3rd disk starting from zero. You can't tell which drive is correct in DISKPART because it doesn't give partition details. Let me go thru DISKPART and I'll show you. That's why I use DISKPART in concert with another partition manager to ensure I'm choosing correctly.
"Media" is the name of the disk that contains the G drive. If you look in MiniTool you will see that Media and G are on disk 3 starting from 1. That's the Samsung 860 disk that I want to blow away.Code:diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.964 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. On computer: THORNE-WIN8 DISKPART> list disk Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 465 GB 0 B Disk 1 Online 1863 GB 0 B * Disk 2 Online 1863 GB 0 B * Disk 3 Online 1863 GB 932 GB Disk 4 Online 2794 GB 0 B * DISKPART> sel disk 2 Disk 2 is now the selected disk. DISKPART> list par Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 Primary 702 GB 1056 KB Partition 2 Primary 99 GB 702 GB Partition 3 Primary 85 GB 802 GB Partition 4 Primary 975 GB 887 GB DISKPART> sel par 1 Partition 1 is now the selected partition. DISKPART> det par Partition 1 Type : ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 Hidden : No Required: No Attrib : 0X8000000000000000 Offset in Bytes: 1081344 Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info ---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------- * Volume 9 Media NTFS Partition 702 GB Healthy
Tried to delete all partitions and got this:
So I'll reboot and J should be free although I have no idea why it's saying "in use" because I have closed all other windows. Maybe something running in the background. Hope not because I'll have to go looking in Services to see what starts running on disk J upon booting up. "Services" is a huge list. Although MiniTool will run before Windows boots so it may not matter.
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Now this is really strange. I deleted all partitions on the Samsung 860 and rebooted. I went into BIOS and selected the legacy drive to boot figuring that I'd want to see that the Media disk is wiped. MiniTool first ran it's job of deleting the remaining partitions. But then I got booted onto the UEFI disk !! I didn't choose it, but something did.
I believe what this means is that the Samsung 860 had the first sector set as the legacy bootstrap. So no matter what I selected, that bootstrap started the legacy disk. Doesn't make sense to me, but that's all I can conclude. Now to restart and select the UEFI drive to boot and then I'll try the legacy disk again. I would think the legacy drive has a bootstrap to boot it's own System partition. (I hope I'm using the term "bootstrap" correctly. What I mean is the first sector on a boot drive that ends with 0x55AA.)
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Here's what I did and what happened. It's good news.
I rebooted and selected the legacy drive. Immediately after the Windows logo appeared some disk was running CHKDSK on 2 partitions. It went by too fast to note which ones. CHKDSK completed and I was successfully logged in to the legacy drive. OK, super.
Then I rebooted and selected the UEFI disk. Again after the Windows logo I was put into CHKDSK for 2 other partitions, again too fast to see which, but I believe for both disks it was the C drive that was processed by CHKDSK. Whatever CHKDSK was doing, it completed successfully as I got no error messages and was taken to a login screen.
OK, so I booted UEFI, but I was booted into legacy drive. Bummer.
I rebooted again and selected the UEFI disk again. No CHKDSK this time and this time I was booted into the UEFI drive. So I'm 1 for 2, but everything is going in the right direction.
I'm going to reboot a few more times before restoring the 4 partitions I wiped, just to feel better that there are no flukes happening.
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Not so good news... I booted into UEFI disk and got it. But then I booted into legacy disk and got the UEFI disk. I've got UEFI enabled in BIOS even though I also have CSM enabled which I've read should be disabled in order to boot UEFI. But with CSM enabled I can get the legacy disk booted which for now is OK. Eventually I will want to boot only the UEFI disk since that's the objective of this entire week-long debacle.
Now I'm going to restore the Media disk partitions one by one and see if I can boot UEFI.
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I restored the G partition and booted UEFI mode successfully. But what is weird is that the disk was GPT. When I rebooted after restoring the G partition, the disk became MBR. I will convert it to GPT, reboot and see where I'm at.
Last edited by thornev; 21 Nov 2021 at 21:09.
One thing you need to do at this point is disable Windows 10 fast startup. Your two Windows 10 installations are fighting each other with fast startup enabled. Run powercfg -h off
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