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Old October 18th, 2004, 12:08 AM   Digg it!   #1 (permalink)
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Formating Hard drive.......

I currently have an 80 Gig hard drive with XP installed. What is the best way to format my drive ? I was thinking of using the fdisk feature on my ME bootdisk, would XP have a problem with this ?

Thanks...............

Last edited by Network67 : October 18th, 2004 at 12:10 AM.
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Old October 18th, 2004, 12:18 AM     #2 (permalink)
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I just use an old Win98 floppy and use dos to format...maybe barbaric, but hey....it works.
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Old October 18th, 2004, 12:33 AM     #3 (permalink)
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Hold on. You want to format your current disk that has XP on it? Of course, you realize all your stuff will be erased. You could also wait until you get your new hard drive (I'm assuming you are not leaving the computer world for pencil and paper) and put your 80GB drive on as a 2nd drive and format it under your new operating system. All it will take then is a right-click.
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Old October 18th, 2004, 06:15 PM     #4 (permalink)
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If you really do want to format and erase all contents, I would just boot to your WinXP cd to format and partition the drive and then reinstall the OS if thats what you plan to do.
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Old October 22nd, 2004, 10:13 PM     #5 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilthanaz
If you really do want to format and erase all contents, I would just boot to your WinXP cd to format and partition the drive and then reinstall the OS if thats what you plan to do.


OK, My computer currently had an unlicensed copy of XP Pro installed. I purchased an OEM licensed version. I want to wipe my drive clean and and install the licensed version of Windows XP Pro. The drive has NTFS. I can't seem to format the drive with cd ?

Last edited by Network67 : October 22nd, 2004 at 10:21 PM.
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Old October 22nd, 2004, 10:37 PM     #6 (permalink)
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I would suggest doing a zero fill format of the drive and then using the XP CD to partition and format in NTFS
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Old October 22nd, 2004, 10:38 PM     #7 (permalink)
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Depending on what brand of HD you have.. most of them have bootable CD's that you can use to format and partion your drive. You can download the ISO's I believe, but not sure. A basic bootable floppy with fdisk should be fine tho. I wouldnt use it to format since XP is better with the NTFS file format.
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Old October 22nd, 2004, 10:38 PM     #8 (permalink)
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Umm, in english ?
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Old October 22nd, 2004, 10:40 PM     #9 (permalink)
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Old October 22nd, 2004, 10:44 PM     #10 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DoctorReno
I would suggest doing a zero fill format of the drive and then using the XP CD to partition and format in NTFS

www.killdisk.com

Use this utility to zero-fill the HDD, then try installing with CD boot. If it gives you problems, make and use the 6 floppy XP start up disks. Obviously, if your only accessible computer, make the start up disks first... you can get them here.

www.bootdisk.com


EDIT: DAMN YOU, TECHKNICKLE! DAMN YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL...........
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Last edited by LeftCoast : October 22nd, 2004 at 10:55 PM.
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