[corey_rideDC]

i have 2 hard drives, my internal and an external. my internal is going south, so i bought a new one. i was monkeying around with Acronis last night and thought it would be a good idea to clone my C drive to my external and then bounce that image to the new internal. started doing it and then thought "d'oh, i can't boot from an external usb drive!". but as i'd already started, i let it run.

now i seem to have f'd up the external drive. it now has 2 partitions, and the properties say: partition style (master boot record).

i just want my old empty external drive back, how do i totally wipe it and start from scratch

 

[binary visions]

Just delete all the partitions - right click on them, delete partition.

Then create one new partition, mark it as active, and format it.

Make sure you're doing it to your external drive, though

 

[corey_rideDC]

yeah, tried that. right clicking on the F partition only gives me "help" and "properties". has something to do with this weird dell recovery partition i think

 

[binary visions]

Strange, it sounds like the partition is in use.

You know, you actually can boot off USB devices. Are you sure you're not running off the USB device right now? Try rebooting and unplugging it, then plugging it in after boot.