Hard Drives: re-purposing (partitioning for other machines)

[brindafella]

Hi,

A friend who knows little about Linux asked me to assist him to change his newly acquired Tivo ('Sony', ex-USA) for Oz. He now has a suitably set up 120GB hard disk after some gentle lessons from me in how to make a CD from an ISO file, and how to launch the CD.

However, he also wants to have his old 40GB drive 're-purposed' for other uses around his various computers. I was asked to do this after he had 'issues'!

I have discovered that the original USA Tivo's Maxtor D540X-4K 4K040H2 40GB drive comes up with a 10MB (that's 10MB) visible disk when I try to do anything to it. Note: Several Linux live CDs seem to show this as a SCSI disk (/dev/sda). No other partition seems to be visible. Seemingly, nothing will tempt any distro I've used to allow me to free up the (other) disk space.

For that matter, the oztivo imaged CD won't touch it, either. It baulks because there is "insufficient disk space" (or words of that effect; also see mention of 10MB above.)

I've yet to find a "brute force" partitioning disk that is around here somewhere.

I'd appreciate any advice, please.

Peter

[Dave Hatt]

You could try booting into Linux with the disk connected and using pdisk on it. Most of the ISO images have pdisk. This should allow you to remove/change the partitions.

[catdog]

Your 40 GB drive is locked, see here:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/Hardware/UnlockATiVoDrive

[Darren King]

Like Catdog says the original hard disk will be locked.

I have never had a problem using qunlock (in fact the last time I did exactly what you are trying to do today!) but the best way to do it is on a PC booted from pure DOS. Not one that is running DOS under Windows or anything like that.

I ended up creating a bootable DOS V7 CD (that is the DOS that comes with Windows 98) and Qunlock on it and it works a treat. You can also Google for various websites that allow you to make a bootable floppy (or USB key if you like) with DOS on it and run Qunlock from that.

After this it is a simple matter to FDISK and format the hard disk for whatever purpose you wish to use it. For other's reading this if you are intending to use the hard disk in a TiVo you do not need the FDISK and format steps.