Solved How Do I Remove Windows 8 bootsect.exe From Locked Partition?

Night AoX

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Okay folks I'm at wits end so, I'm giving up & calling in help. I'll be as detailed as possible. Prerequisites: I have a 500 GB external hard drive that's now only showing 465 GB of empty space. I believe the other 35 GB partition is being locked by Windows 8's bootsect.exe or something to that affect. I was trying to set up Windows 8 on my external hard drive without having to burn the .iso image to a disc. I thought it could be done but, boy was I wrong. I created a separate partition on my C: drive to hold some other files including the Windows 8 extracted .iso files. I also created a separate partion on the external hard drive to install Windows 8's MBR via the command line:


D:/BOOT/BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 H: (where D: is the new partition on my boot drive & H: is the partition on the external hard drive where I installed Windows 8's MBR)


The MBR installed just fine. I then copied all the .iso files into the H: partition. I did all of that in my test to see if I could boot from the H: drive giving that it now had an MBR & setup files to go on. I now know that is a major fail & is completely impossible. I've since deleted the D: partition on my boot drive (re-merged it with C:) I tried to delete the extra partition on my external hard drive but, it's not there anymore 0.o I tried to find it with Disk Management & EASUS Partition Master along with WinDirStat, etc... but, to no avail. They all say the same thing. 465 GB drive :/ I must've searched a dozen forums & I already tried turning off Restore, deleting old set-up, upgrade & shadow file, checked my Norton for back-up sets, etc... Now here's the kicker: EASUS Partition Master lists the drive as a GPT (Data Partition) Type. Now that I've never seen before with this program. I googled gpt data partition & I can't really say I understand what it means but, there was talk of MBR in some of the results so, I believe Windows 8's MBR may be the culprit behind my missing partition. So, the question remains, how do you uninstall the Windows 8 MBR?


Here are some screen shots of my set up:


500 GB external hard drive:
2012-07-10 15.43.08.jpg


Disk Management:
Capture.jpg


EASUS Partition Manager:
Capture2.jpg


If the pics are too blurry (damn snipping tool -_-), I also have them as attachments...
 
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My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 64-bit

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    64-bit Windows 10
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Uh... did you check the size of a full partition on the drive before you did all this?

A "500Gig" drive will only be about 465 Gig in Windows (or any OS) because the "500Gig" advertising label on the drive is a lie (of sorts).

"500Gig" on label == 500 * 1,000,000,000 bytes, (This is one useless decimal advertising gigabyte that has NOTHING to do with computers)
"465Gig" in Windows == 465 * 1,073,741,821 bytes, (This is one computer Gigabyte)

Or 500,000,000,000 / 1,073,741,821 == 465.6612886087819

So "500GB" on disk label == "465GB" in windows file/disk management software. This also goes for Any OS, OSX, Linux etc.

How the drive companies have been getting away with this for so long is unimaginable.

[Edit] Aw crud, took too long to type post :p [/edit]
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7/8
Seagate should really call the disk 500GiB - the actual number of BYTES * 500,000,000,000

Since 1 KB =1024 B, and 1 MB =1024 KB, and 1 GB = 1024 MB

500 000 000 000 / (1024 * 1024 * 1024) = 465.661287 which is the correct formatted size in GB (according to Google calculator)

If you want to wipe all partition data, formatting and MBR and bootsector data from the disk,

issue the following commands at an elevated command prompt:

Diskpart

sel disk 1

clean

exit

and you are back to factory fresh status.

Chkdsk /f (with the F parameter) tells the disk checker to Fix any file problems it finds
Chkdsk /r is to Recover any bad sectors it finds
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center
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    PC/Desktop
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    HP COMPAQ Presario CQ57
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    AMD E- 300 APU with Radion HD Graphics 1.30GHz
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    inbuilt
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    4GB
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    no Start menu modifications
    Upgraded with no issues to 8.0 and to 8.1
/f tells checkdisk to fix errors.

If you didn't specify /f then it is warning you it is checking for errors but will not fix them.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    7/8/ubuntu/Linux Deepin
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
I have lost track of what the problem is - is there a problem?

Easeus is telling you chose gpt for your 500gb drive.

If you don't have anything on there, just get easeus to change it to mbr.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    7/8/ubuntu/Linux Deepin
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
I have lost track of what the problem is - is there a problem?

Easeus is telling you chose gpt for your 500gb drive.

If you don't have anything on there, just get easeus to change it to mbr.

Well it appears that there is no problem... But, how do I get EASUS to to change it to MBR?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 64-bit
You're welcome Harvey.

BTW - only geeks know about the drive capacity thing .

It just shows you are not a geek - but normal.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    7/8/ubuntu/Linux Deepin
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
Well I am a geek...Just didn't know they lied on drive capacity advertising. I'm more familiar with desktop drives which always had the advertised storage space.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 64-bit
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