hard drive formatting

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whitefoxxx

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#9520 24-Sep-2006 14:14

I have sevrel small hard drives that i am interested in formatting... how would i go around doing this??

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#46739 24-Sep-2006 14:36

plug into the spare IDE/SATA connector, and boot up in windows xp or whatever os, and format.

Assuming you know how to plug them into the system, most OS will have a Help to guide you on how to prepare a new hard drive for use.

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whitefoxxx

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#46743 24-Sep-2006 16:58

yes but how do u actually format. give spesific instructions... i am using 98se by the way. thanks ^_^

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#46744 24-Sep-2006 17:41

If the drive is already partitioned, then just open Explorer, right click the drive and select Properties. Change to Tool and there's a Format button. Make sure you have select the correct drive.

whitefoxxx

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#46751 24-Sep-2006 22:23

yess but how do i make the hard drive come in im 'my computer' once it is plugged in?

freitasm

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#46753 24-Sep-2006 22:55

If the drive is not faulty and already partitioned then it will show up automatically. If it's not partitioned then you can use the Disk Management tool - from Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management.

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#46775 25-Sep-2006 10:46

The OP said the OS is 98SE so no XP/NT/2K style Admin tools etc. The easiest thing to do would be to go to the drive manufacturers website and download their drive setup utility. You should also make a DOS boot disk as the setup utility will usually ask for one during the setup procedure.

Mark

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#48477 12-Oct-2006 15:35

I'm amazed so few here know any DOS!

Install the old disk into you machine along with your main one, maybe set it to master on the second IDE port if you have one.

When you Windows98 has booted, go to shutdown and do a restart into MSDOS (or you can force it into DOS at boot time by pressing F8 repeatedly as its starting (straight after the machine his finished counting RAM is a good point)

Then at the DOS prompt, type : fdisk
This si the disk partitioning tool, change to the other attached disk
Should be releativly self explanatory from there .. been to long for me to do this from memory :-)

Once you have created a primapry partition on the disk, exit out of FDISK and dor a format <drive letter of new partition:>

Have fun and don't toast your main disk! :-)

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chiefie

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#48478 12-Oct-2006 15:39

*ahem* for your information, most of us DO know... but we don't always have a MS DOS access, and certainly in today widely used OS (Windows XP/2000) you will have hard time to find Win98 (don't get me wrong, they do still exist, just rare nowaday).

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#48483 12-Oct-2006 16:17

Yep. I am from the PC-DOS era still. PC DOS 1.0 was my start - but before that I was on CP/M and MP/M. So, yes, I know about the DOS. But who's got it (readily available) these days?

Mark

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#48489 12-Oct-2006 17:23

freitasm: Yep. I am from the PC-DOS era still. PC DOS 1.0 was my start - but before that I was on CP/M and MP/M. So, yes, I know about the DOS. But who's got it (readily available) these days?

Wow! You are like, So Ancient! ;-)

And you've all got DOS readily available .. Start->Run "command.com" Tada! Still lurking in the background of every "modern" PC .. not sure about fdisk though, think diskpar and diskpart have replaced it for the command line stuff.

Mark

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#48493 12-Oct-2006 17:56

"command.com" is for win98 et all.

however on windows nt/2000/xp/2003/vista, command.com is only mapping to cmd.com which is only a command prompt AND not real DOS.

DOS is truly dead/non-existent in NT world.

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#48494 12-Oct-2006 18:10

I'd agree that the Windows 2000 command prompt is not the OS level anymore and just a CLI, but Command.com and cmd.exe are seperate ways of doing the same thing, command.com isn't a link to cmd.exe ... run the side by side and you'll see ... well on Windows 2000 anyway .. not advanced on my work laptop :-)

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#48496 12-Oct-2006 18:16

Command prompt is not exactly as MS-DOS - fdisk is no longer there on Windows XP for example. You use the Disk Management for this.