Today I was preparing a 2.5″ SATA laptop hard drive for use in my wife’s mini-PC. The hard drive I was attempting to use came from an old Acer laptop. I connected the hard drive via a USB enclosure and attempted to clear out the old partitions and reformat. Unfortunately I found that the Windows 7 Disk Management interface would not allow me to delete the “System Recovery” partition.

Here is how I went about deleting that protected partition so I could format the ENTIRE drive for use in my wife’s computer…

#1 Open command Prompt

#2 Type “diskpart” and press enter to launch the text based diskpart tool…

#3 Here is a transcript of the session:
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: V131

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
——– ————- ——- ——- — —
Disk 0 Online 298 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 7640 MB 0 B
Disk 2 Online 298 GB 285 GB

DISKPART> SELECT DISK 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> LIST PARTITION

Partition ### Type Size Offset
————- —————- ——- ——-
Partition 1 Recovery 13 GB 1024 KB

DISKPART> SELECT PARTITION 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> DETAIL PARTITION

Partition 1
Type : 27
Hidden: Yes
Active: No
Offset in Bytes: 1048576

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
———- — ———– —– ———- ——- ——— ——–
* Volume 5 PQSERVICE NTFS Partition 13 GB Healthy Hidden

DISKPART> INACTIVE

The current partition is already marked inactive. (I didn’t need to do this…)

DISKPART> DELETE PARTITION

Virtual Disk Service error:
Cannot delete a protected partition without the force protected parameter set.  (I eventually had to lookup the override command because I had forgotten how to do it…)

DISKPART> DELETE PARTITION FORCE (wrong)

The arguments specified for this command are not valid.
For more information on the command type: HELP DELETE PARTITION

DISKPART> FORCE DELETE PARTITION (wrong, but since it was not recognized it did list all the options for me…)

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601

ACTIVE – Mark the selected partition as active.
ADD – Add a mirror to a simple volume.
ASSIGN – Assign a drive letter or mount point to the selected volume.
ATTRIBUTES – Manipulate volume or disk attributes.
ATTACH – Attaches a virtual disk file.
AUTOMOUNT – Enable and disable automatic mounting of basic volumes.
BREAK – Break a mirror set.
CLEAN – Clear the configuration information, or all information, off the
disk.
COMPACT – Attempts to reduce the physical size of the file.
CONVERT – Convert between different disk formats.
CREATE – Create a volume, partition or virtual disk.
DELETE – Delete an object.
DETAIL – Provide details about an object.
DETACH – Detaches a virtual disk file.
EXIT – Exit DiskPart.
EXTEND – Extend a volume.
EXPAND – Expands the maximum size available on a virtual disk.
FILESYSTEMS – Display current and supported file systems on the volume.
FORMAT – Format the volume or partition.
GPT – Assign attributes to the selected GPT partition.
HELP – Display a list of commands.
IMPORT – Import a disk group.
INACTIVE – Mark the selected partition as inactive.
LIST – Display a list of objects.
MERGE – Merges a child disk with its parents.
ONLINE – Online an object that is currently marked as offline.
OFFLINE – Offline an object that is currently marked as online.
RECOVER – Refreshes the state of all disks in the selected pack.
Attempts recovery on disks in the invalid pack, and
resynchronizes mirrored volumes and RAID5 volumes
that have stale plex or parity data.
REM – Does nothing. This is used to comment scripts.
REMOVE – Remove a drive letter or mount point assignment.
REPAIR – Repair a RAID-5 volume with a failed member.
RESCAN – Rescan the computer looking for disks and volumes.
RETAIN – Place a retained partition under a simple volume.
SAN – Display or set the SAN policy for the currently booted OS.
SELECT – Shift the focus to an object.
SETID – Change the partition type.
SHRINK – Reduce the size of the selected volume.
UNIQUEID – Displays or sets the GUID partition table (GPT) identifier or
master boot record (MBR) signature of a disk.

DISKPART> DELETE PARTITION OVERRIDE

DiskPart successfully deleted the selected partition.

DISKPART>

That’s it! Proceed with caution and of course adjust all the relevant disk/partition numbers to match YOUR computer.

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