partitions don't show up

traderbob

New Member
My computer runs under Windows ME and has 2 hard drives- 40MB (slave) and 80 MB (Master). I was able to successfully wipe the 40 MB drive and was able to see the individual partitions. I started out by just wiping one partition and leaving all the others alone and then ultimately wiping the complete drive. I now want to wipe some of the partitions on the 80 MB drive, but not the complete drive. When I look at the drive with the DBAN program, there is one line for the drive and one line for the partition. But I have 12 partitions on the drive (C-N). Why aren't the partitions showing up when I look at the drive? Both of the drives are IDE drives. The one with the problem is an IBM drive. Please help if you know the answer. Thanx. :(
 
First, the partition numbers that you can see in DBAN do not always correspond to the drive letters used by Microsoft Windows. Be careful.

Second, running Windows ME with 12 partitions is unusual. DBAN does not show partitions if there is anything unusual in the partition table.
 
Thanks very much for the input. The drive that I was able to successfully wipe had 10 partitions and I was able to see them all (under Windows ME). Maybe if I were to change the number of partitions from 12 to 10, they would all show up and then I would be able to wipe the partitions that I want to. But I would think that having 10 partitions would also be unusual with Windows ME. I´ll give it a try and see what happens.
 
After reconsidering, maybe I shouldn't try to eliminate specific partitions if the partitions don´t correspond to the Windows partitions. I know that when I originally wiped two partitions on the successfully wiped drive, the two that I attempted to wipe did correspond to the actual Windows partitions. So, I guess I assumed that all the partitions actually corresponded. Isn`t there any way to be certain- I know that 1 and 2 are the operating system and that 5 and up are the other partitions. I have copies of all the data- so that if I falsely wiped some data, I could always restore it. I just wouldn`t want to wipe all the programs that I have installed (they're in their own separate partition, i.e. not the C drive). Then I would have to reinstall them all and that would be a bummer.
 
Remember that you can use Heidi Eraser to do a freespace wipe on these partitions. Just format the partition prior.

DBAN is most useful for wiping a system partition.
 
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