Refurbished HDD refusing to be cleaned

[RedEdain]

Hi there!

 

One of my friends has many broken laptops and he offered me to take them, since they were unusable. In one of them, I found a Seagate 1TB HDD (ST1000LM024) that I'm willing to use in a PC for my dad. The thing is when I try to reinstall Windows 10 (It already had Windows 10 installed on it, but I wanted a fresh copy) it says that this is a GPT Partition so I can't install Windows on it. Fine, I'll just convert it again in MBR. Nope, the drive doesn't want to be cleaned. I can't even manually delete files, as it says that there's programs that are running from that drive (Which they're not supposed to) 

 

So, my question:

 

How can I install Windows on it properly, or delete all the files on that drive? (Like if there's a way to stop all programs from specified drive) 

Thanks!

 

EDIT: After checking, the cleaning was pretty much successful, with the drive almost empty, unless with the diskpart or manually, it still refuses to reformat it or to convert it to MBR, telling me that there are programs that runs from that drive.

Edited November 24, 2019 by RedEdain
Clarification

[Vairend]

Hi,

I am not an expert a this, but if Windows says there are programs running on it then it means there are. Since it is a secondary drive you plugged into your computer (so no software you actually installed on it yourself) there might be malware/viruses that are running from it as soon as it is plugged in (or vice-versa, from your PC to it). You might want to run some malware cleaner see if it finds anything on it and/or open task manager and see if there are any tasks running that you don't recognize. You might even have 3rd party software on your PC that usually runs stuff on connected drives.

Again, not an expert, but this is what I could think of from the top of my head. I never had this specific issue before.


Another way you can reformat it is via booting from a USB stick with either some command line partition tool or Windows install kit (easy to make one for Win 10) or restart your PC in recovery mode (windows 10 has this feature) and see if you an reformat from it.

[RedEdain]

6 hours ago, Vairend said:

Hi,

I am not an expert a this, but if Windows says there are programs running on it then it means there are. Since it is a secondary drive you plugged into your computer (so no software you actually installed on it yourself) there might be malware/viruses that are running from it as soon as it is plugged in (or vice-versa, from your PC to it). You might want to run some malware cleaner see if it finds anything on it and/or open task manager and see if there are any tasks running that you don't recognize. You might even have 3rd party software on your PC that usually runs stuff on connected drives.

Again, not an expert, but this is what I could think of from the top of my head. I never had this specific issue before.


Another way you can reformat it is via booting from a USB stick with either some command line partition tool or Windows install kit (easy to make one for Win 10) or restart your PC in recovery mode (windows 10 has this feature) and see if you an reformat from it.

When I tried to boot it VIA USB, it wouldn't let me install Windows on it, as it was a "GPT Partition", but I might try to scan it. Thanks!

[Vairend]

Did it allow you to format it though? The Windows Install Kit allows you to format drives before you install windows on them. So you can even use it to format a drive and then just quit the utility without installing Windows.

[RedEdain]

50 minutes ago, Vairend said:

Did it allow you to format it though? The Windows Install Kit allows you to format drives before you install windows on them. So you can even use it to format a drive and then just quit the utility without installing Windows.

It allowed me, but nothing happened, I had still the same message stating that I can't install Windows on it.

[demonix00]

You might need to DBAN the drive to completely clear it and the boot record to make it able to do a new windows 10 install (although something like gparted might allow you to wipe the partition and change the boot record to MBR if it's required for the system it is going to be used in).