How to delete a partition using fdisk

Updated: 01/24/2018 by Computer Hope
Note

Before deleting a partition, it is important you realize deleting a partition deletes all information on the hard drive.

Computer hard drive

First, before deleting the partition, determine what partition is currently setup on the hard drive by displaying the partition information. To do this from the fdisk menu, choose:

4 - Display partition

Once the partition information is displayed, verify the "Type" of partition defined. The type may be PRI DOS or NON DOS:

PRI DOS = primary DOS partition
NON DOS = Non DOS partition

If an extended or logical DOS partition is defined, you can display that information to determine if any logical partition is defined in that extended partition.

EXT DOS = extended DOS partition

How to delete a primary partition

If you have an extended or logical partition, you cannot remove the primary partition until the extended partition is completely removed. See the next section for information on how to do this.

From the fdisk menu, choose:

3 - Delete primary partition
1 - Delete primary DOS partition, select 1 to delete primary partition and enter volume label as shown above on your screen, if no volume label is specified just press enter.

How to delete an extended partition

3 - Delete partition or logical DOS Drive
3 - Delete logical DOS Drive(s) in the extended DOS partition, select each
drive letter to delete.
3 - Delete partition or logical DOS Drive
2 - Delete extended partition