Hard Drive Formatting

[handan2002]

Hello everyone!

As some of you (such as excaliber) may know, I've been building my own PC. Now, everything is set up and running- almost, that is.

I've got 2 hard disks, one of which I don't know how i managed to format it, but I did. However, I don't know how to format the other disk anymore. The 2nd drive has nothing on it, and has no file system (new disk). The first disk is currently running WinXP Pro with NTFS (which can't be read by MS-Dos anyway).

So, if you can help me in anyway to format the 2nd hard disk, please reply!

Thanks in advance

 

[mutant]

It depends if you want to buy some additional tools or stick with what Windows gives you. If you are willing to buy some software then PartitionMagic is the way to go. If you don't want to buy any software, then go into the Help And Support section for Windows and search for DiskPart program. The help will give you everything you need to know about the usage of that program. It is a command line program btw.

 

[robot313]

Or you can use the Disk Management console program in Computer management (control panel -> admin tools), as long as the disk is in the same computer but is not the one currently booted to.

 

[General Error]

A quick and easy way of formatting drives is to get hold of a windows 98 boot disk and then use the command line program fdisk on there. Simply

Boot the computer with the disk in the drive
Wait until you get a little '>' that you can type at
Type 'fdisk' and the options on the screen are fairly self explanatory

Note: I dont know if this works with multiple drives so you may have to plug it in on its own as the master to do that

 

[handan2002]

Hi!

I chose to use the Disk Management Program for this case. It was all really self explanatory, and the disk is being formatted right now! Thanks guys!