Ubuntu
gparted package

format external HDD Error

Asked by lrs52200

I am unable to format my external drive because I wasn't paying attention when installing Ubuntu 11.04 and instead of installing on my internal drive, it installed on my external drive - and I lost all that information. I'll be more careful next time. I then installed Ubuntu 11.04 (and have now upgraded to 11.10) and tried to format the external drive to get rid of the unwanted O.S. but it gives me an error: An error occurred while performing an operation on "500 GB Hard Disk" (WD WDC WD5000AAVS-00ZTBO): The device is busy." In the "details" window it says: "One or more partitions are busy on /dev/sdf"

Can anyone tell me how to erase this external HDD?

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Wyatt Smith (wyatt-smith) said : 		#1

I would suggest using gparted to handle the external drive. You can repartition/reformat as necessary.

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