explanation of a EISA partition on Seagate drive

[kevotron]

I was going to reformat (thru XO install)a Seagate Barracuda 7200 160gb drive and noticed that there is a Partition 1 before the C:/ --it is a 5gb EISA utilities partition. ANybody have an idea what that is and what its for?

 

[kevotron]

OOPs! That should read (thru XP install) not XO.

 

[Locango]

kevotron,

i m having the same problem as you...
do you have any answer by now?

thank you.

 

[garebo]

Could it be related to the issues mentioned here?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/165181/EN-US/

If its a used drive then perhaps it could be?


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[garebo]

If the drive was used in a Compaq system, the this eisa partition would be used for that. I think there are other mfgrs that do this too.
I believe all you have to do is reformat the hard drive.
You can make a win98se boot disk, set your system to boot from floppy instead of cdrom, then when you get to a:\ you type fdisk. When in fdisk you delete both partitions and reboot and go back into fdisk and partition the drive as you wish and then format the drive.
Set system back to boot from cdrom, take out boot floppy and install win xp, hopefully without any more probs.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[micker377]

With a 98 boot disk (fdisk), you will probably see a "non-DOS partition" (that's where the "utilities are). If so, you will given a choice to "Remove non-Dos partition", go ahead and do it.