Formatting 3rd harddrive

casual123 · 5 Jan 2011 at 14:59

Ive just added a third harddrive to my system and i cant manage to format it because it says "volume is in use" ive tried going to disk management and doing it that way too, any help?

EDIT: i think i may have formatted it using some software , however the full 153 gb isnt showing, 3gb is taken up by nothing ? any ideas

Ch3m1c4L · 5 Jan 2011 at 17:38

what do you mean 153? is that the size of a formatted 160gb?
If nothing is loading from the drive, then disk manager should be able to forceably unmount the drive and as such format it. It should ask you if you want to do that when you try to format it. Another way is to just stick a windows dvd in and load the setup on that, and format from that so that nothing is loaded so no problems

casual123 · 5 Jan 2011 at 19:20

Ch3m1c4L said:
what do you mean 153? is that the size of a formatted 160gb?
If nothing is loading from the drive, then disk manager should be able to forceably unmount the drive and as such format it. It should ask you if you want to do that when you try to format it. Another way is to just stick a windows dvd in and load the setup on that, and format from that so that nothing is loaded so no problems

the drive is 160gb but windows is showing it as 150gb free of 153gb

Ch3m1c4L · 6 Jan 2011 at 08:59

thats weird, unless its got a hidden partition on it from something. I'd either download a tool like partition magic or EASEUS (last time i checked that had free partitioning tools etc) to format it, if that doesnt work create a boot disk from EASEUS or use a windows dvd and format it from there.