Removing partition to recover a drive letter (WinXP)

[ChrisGreaves]

How can I "scrub" the little partition on the external hard drive?

The portable hard drive is a "WD My Passport Essential" nominally 320GB.
It comes with about 640MB of its own software in its own partition.
I could live with the loss of 640MB but I dislike that it means TWO of the 26 available drive letters are snaffled up.
If there is an easy way to scrub the 644MB partition and make a single partition of the drive I'd be so happy I'd go out and buy a tub of ice-cream.

I searched for answers.

This page says I can delete partitions by ... right-click and select "Delete Partition"; that works for the 299GB partition, but is not available on the 644 MB partition.

This page indicates that the partition is in Firmware (?) and can't be deleted. That suggests i will lose two drive letters each time i plug it in.

This page suggests i remove the drive letter. I've done that (during this post) and it is gone; I have yet to see if it reappears after the next reboot and plug-in.

This page suggested a technique for Win/7/Vista, but I took a look in Win XP anyway to see if there was software I could remove (no). Nor could I see anything that leapt out at me from RevoUninstaller.

Tomorrow morning, after a good night's sleep, I'll try again with my bootable DOS CD from last weekend's foray and see if FDisk comes up with any answers.

In the meantime, if anyone has anything like dear old Unlocker that works on partitions to clean things up, I'd be grateful for a hint.

Again, it's not about the space, it's about the drive letters.

[DaveA]

Is this your dive in question http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=698" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ?
I have read through most of the pages and find nothing that talks about using two drive letters, are you sure this second drive letter in form this device?

[ChrisGreaves]

Dave A thanks for the quick response.

Is this your drive in question

Yes. I see "Model: WDBAAA3200ABK" on the base of the little carton.

...are you sure the second drive letter is from this device?

Pretty sure:
The image below (looks pretty grainy in Preview) is WinXP Computer management in the process of formatting drive F:, which is the new drive.
The last entry is the 615 MB partition; there is no drive letter with it right now, because I used the "remove drive letter" via Computer Management. Until about 30 minutes ago it was known as drive H: on my system.
Once the Format is complete I'll power off/on and see what shows up.

2.JPG

[viking33]

Dave A thanks for the quick response.

Is this your drive in question

Yes. I see "Model: WDBAAA3200ABK" on the base of the little carton.

...are you sure the second drive letter is from this device?

Pretty sure:
The image below (looks pretty grainy in Preview) is WinXP Computer management in the process of formatting drive F:, which is the new drive.
The last entry is the 615 MB partition; there is no drive letter with it right now, because I used the "remove drive letter" via Computer Management. Until about 30 minutes ago it was known as drive H: on my system.
Once the Format is complete I'll power off/on and see what shows up.

2.JPG

Chris,
The last drive shown in your screenshot is a UDF ( Universal Disk Format ) used for OPTICAL drives. So that is a CD or DVD drive, not a hard drive. You should be able to change the drive letter itself to whatever you want using Disk Management tools.

[ChrisGreaves]

The last drive shown in your screenshot is a UDF ( Universal Disk Format ) used for OPTICAL drives. So that is a CD or DVD drive, not a hard drive. You should be able to change the drive letter itself to whatever you want using Disk Management tools.

It is a "virtual drive" or some such, and it is associated with the USB drive.

With the drive plugged in, both partitions appear in Disk Management.
The moment I unplug the drive, both partitions dis-appear in Disk Management.

Earlier this afternoon I managed to change the drive letter (to "Remove drive letter" I think), so I have achieved my goal of freeing up an otherwise useless drive letter; that change has survived a reboot, so I am a happy little camper right now.

The neat'n'tidy part of me wants to get the 615 MB partition out of sight, but I'll probably forget all about it in a day or two.

I got 300GB for $cdn79+tax, and can start another rebuild this weekend.
Yippeee!

(signed) "Trying to sound happy" of Toronto.

[John Gray]

I've had good success and no problems with the free Easeus Partition Manager in changing the size of disk partitions in XP. Deleting a partition is equivalently simple.

[ChrisGreaves]

Deleting a partition is equivalently simple.

Thanks Mister John Gray (grin).
I d/l and installed; it looks good, but it doesn't see the 615MB partition.
As a test, I went back into Disk management and re-assigned H: to the partition, reopened Easeus, and it still doesn't see it.

This page indicates that the partition is in Firmware and it seems more and more that that is the case.

That is, I've purchased a whole lot of storage cheaply and should/will be happy with it. That they have "built" 615MB of storage elsewhere in the device is, I suppose, not really any business of mine.

1.JPG

[StuartR]

This web site has instructions for deleting the Virtual CD partition on a WD passport drive.

I haven't tried this, just searched on Google.