How do you unlock a hard drive?

[footballking3420]

I have a bit of a problem on my hands. I installed a Linux OS on a separate partition, but it never came up on GRUB. Now I want to format my entire HDD, but that Linux partition shows up as being locked. I can't boot to it nor can I delete the partition. Help would be appreciated.

[nitroshift]

Have you tried Acronis Disk Director?

[Kelsenellenelvian]

A win98 bootdisk?

Try the good old fdisk...

[Zxian]

Kel's idea is probably the best, if not a little outdated. I haven't had a floppy-capable system in ages.

A similar idea is to get UBCD and use one of the disk-wiping tools there. It's a bit overkill, but you can be sure that whatever entry in the partition table that's locking the Linux partition will be erased.

Yet another option to try (and less dramatic) is to download Knoppix and burn it to a CD/DVD. You'll be able to boot into a graphical Linux environment, which runs directly from the CD drive. Once booted, run 'gparted'. You should be able to delete the locked Linux partition from there.

Hope this helps.