I have a 100 GB external HD drive that I used for backup purposes. When I connected it to the PC I formatted in Windows as a NTFS. Later on I installed openSuSE and at a certain moment while trying to correct a dual booting problem I accidentally messed it up and the external HD drive has a linux file system now.
Is there any way to reformat the external HD drive in openSuSE 11.1 (64-bit) so that Windows Vista Home Premium may be able to recreate the NTFS?
Can’t Vista just reformat the disk and ignore what’s there? I have a feeling it can. If not, all you need to do is blank the partition table and it will look like a blank disk.
How does one blank the partition table in openSuSE 11.1?
I tried to reformat the disk in Vista, but it does not recognize linux file systems.
It definitely can be done with fdisk /dev/sdc (assuming it’s sdc, check your device list first) and deleting all partitions. Even faster is to write zeros to the first block of the disk but I won’t show that here, or you’ll blame me for killing your system if you write on the wrong disk. 
Maybe it can be done via YaST parititioner, deleting all partitions, that is.
Vista sure is fussy, if it really cannot take over a disk and format it.
Thank you very much,sir.
You were right. The external HD can be formatted in Vista, but one does have to spend quite a bit of more time picking up small pieces of information mostly from the web.
Thanks again for you kind help.
Not to worry, in Windows 7 I’m sure you will only have answer 10 questions instead of 20, and provide your credit card number. Just kidding.
Glad you solved your problem.