I need to format a hard drive which has router os installed on it, it was on the PC when I did a netinstall and defaulted the install to the HDD, but i wanted it on a flash drive, so I unplugged the HDD and left the Flash drive plugged in, and ran the netinstaller again, and it installed perfectly, problem is whenever i plug the hard drive in, it forces boot on the HDD, not the Flash, but i still want to read the HDD once its booted off the flash, for proxy cache reasons.
I have tried plugging the drive into windows machines, linux machines, you name it, doesn’t pick it up, i know the drive is fine because the pc boots routeros off it fine.
if you can easily access it - you can try to open it under windows with manage tool, to mange drives and partitions, there windows should see it, or hook up to linux box where you should be able to access it with partitioning tools.
Also, you should fix your bios to boot from FLASH first, and then from hard drive, and just format disk from /store disk menu when you finally boot from FLASH with drive hooked up.
ITs gona be challenging to format the drive that its booting from, since there is some protective measures in to avoid that, the right thing to do is to have the boot order set right, the real issue is the partition on the drive is set to active, This is propedbly going to cost you a site visit, since the system might go into please insert boot disk error.
you can try
[admin@CyberT] > store disk format-drive system ;
Just make sure that you do the right one, and i dont know if this will work.