I have an HP USB powered portable hard drive. I am trying to delete a
folder from it and get a message that access is denied. I had used
this drive to copy data from an old computer and need to clean
everything off the drive now. I have been able to clean off all the
other folders, including the old Windows directory. I thought about
clicking on the format command in the drive properties but it states
that Windows will not let me format the drive. Is there a utility that
will either let me delete this stubborn directory or one that I can
use to format the drive and erase all the data. I would like to get to
the point where I can place several partitions on this portable drive.

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Request for Question Clarification by livioflores-ga on 11 Mar 2006 18:07 PST

Did you see the folder's properties (right click on it) to confirm if
it is marked as "Read Only"?, this could prevents the deletion.

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Clarification of Question by steve_rehmann-ga on 13 Mar 2006 13:02 PST

I did attempt to edit the directories attributes as it did show
read-only. Again, it will not let me make these changes. This is
really strange to me. I had deleted all other directories from this
portable hard drive, including the windows directory with no problems.
This directory is a subdirectory of the "Broderbund" directory and is
called "books". It is on local drive "m". I also tried to delete it
when I hooked the portable HD up to my laptop instead. The same
problem appears and it will not allow access. Eventually I will be
partitioning this harddrive to one 100GB and 3 20GB partitions. In the
interim this is just a sticky problem that I'd like to figure out.

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Clarification of Question by steve_rehmann-ga on 13 Mar 2006 16:38 PST

I tried again to format the portable drive using the right click to
format available through "my computer" This time it let me format the
drive. That removed all folders except a "system volume information"
folder which I imagine belongs there anyway.

Chances are you just need to reboot to be able to remove the directory
and/or close any applications that that boot up with Windows. Often
times files & directories get "stuck" as "in use" very easily with
windows (the read only option only keeps you from being able to
overwrite folders and maybe be warned about moving/deleting read only
files). It sounds as if you?re primarily concerned with just being
able to re-partition the drive (repartitioning in effect deletes file
tables) which is quite easy if you are running Windows 2000/XP or
later. In depth information for this can be found at the Microsoft
Knowledge Base article linked below.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323967/en-us

Once you have reached the ?Managing Partitions? portion you will want
to first need to locate the drive you want to delete (deleting the
partition). Once you have done that you will want to right click on
the partition and click "Delete Partition" and follow any prompts
warning you about the deletion. Once you accomplish that you will want
to then follow the KB article linked from the "Managing Partitions"
section.

If you are not running Windows 2000/XP or later you will need a
program like ?Partition Magic? (purchase required) to repartition you
drive since fdisk (win95, 98, ME) often has issues with partitioning
external hard drives.

If somehow this is not enough you can go one step further if there
somehow was pertinent data on the drive you wanted erased (known as
zeroing out the drive) you can use a tool like ?WipeDrive? (purchase
required). I do not see this as what your after though since you will
be keeping this drive suposidly.

I had one that gave me agro, i took the HDD out of the external drive
and put it into my pc, formated there fine. might help you depends on
your drive

good luck ~

I had a problem once where I created a file (under Windows 2000) that
was apparently a reserved file name, though it isn't on the list. It
couldn't be deleted through Windows, here's how MS says to do it:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315226/en-us