Have an external hardisk, taken out from an old laptop. I am using Windows 10 and try to delete the System / Windows / Program Files in my external hardisk. It says permission is needed??? How to delete the files? I can't format them too.
When you "reclaim" an old hdd from a laptop, isn't it normal to format the drive when you want to use it as an external usb storage drive?
I understood the files he wants to be deleted are the remains from the laptop, who uses an external drive for system files, especially 2.5" drives who are slow
Nah, HDD was an internal laptop drive, he took it out and tried to use it externally, but doesn't have permission to delete the old system files
THAT I missed Never experienced that formatting an old drive containing systemfiles from another system couldn't be done, when done right.
If he had clicked through the prompts he would have taken ownership of the folders and then could do whatever he wanted.
There will be at least 2 partitions on the drive, and if the recovery partition is still on the drive it will be 3 or 4. In diskmanager delete all partitions and create 1 new one and format it, should work. And using windows explorer to open the disk, gharlane's option would have given also all rights to it.
You can use some live cd like Minitool Partition Wizard or Hiren's Boot disk and you can do what ever you need to do with your HDD.