Reformatting External HDD Ubuntu/Vista

[Ubucats]

Hi,

Some while ago my brother installed Ubuntu on an external hard drive and password protected it. Unfortunately he can't remember the password and wants me to reformat it but I don't know how.

Google shows many results but the solutions all seem to require being already logged into Ubuntu to do the reformatting. I have access to a laptop with Windows Vista installed onto it and was wondering if there was some way to use Vista to do it. I want the new format to still be Linux as well and use a NTFS file system.

Thanks in advance!

[2F4U]

Have you tried to delete the partitions on the external hdd from Windows? It should work, even if there is a password on it. After deleting all partitions, create new ones and format them. You won't be able to recover data from the hdd with Windows because it probably can't read the filesystem.