Formatting hard drive - need options

[garebo]

I have always used fdisk to format a hard drive to put in a firewire or usb external box. Havent been able to format the hard drive in the firewire setup i just installed, had to use fdisk.
However, sometimes i run into a problem when transferring certain files and folders as I have my main hard drive formatted NTFS via win xp pro install cd and the external drive formatted fat32.
Is there a way to format a hard drive in a usb or firewire external box from within win xp pro?
How can I format a hard drive NTFS without installing win xp pro on it?
How far will the old fdisk go? Will it format a 120 gig hard drive?
Are there newer, better disk formatting tools and where can i get them? Is there a stand-alone NTFS format prog out there?
Will a win98se boot disk boot up a win xp system if the bios is set to boot from the floppy? Reason i ask this is because i cant seem to get this one win xp pro P4 system to do so. I always have a test setup that i use to fdisk and format smaller hard drives, so i have never tried larger hard drives. I let win xp pro install cd format the larger ones. But it would be great to have a few choices.

Any advice, info, links to programs or other info, that will help address these issues would be appreciated.
I figure this should be a good post as there must be others who can benefit from what info is sure to come! In other words, i hope i'm not the only dummy, lol.
Don't ask, you don't learn. As this is the best place i know of to learn.

Thanks

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[garebo]

I forgot one more question I have.
I used to use the software that came with hard drives, like maxtor maxblast, etc. I stopped using this software to format hard drives as i also used goback and they would conflict. That was about 4 yrs ago.
I would like to know if the newer versions of software like maxblast and goback still dont work together well or if these problems have been fixed.
thanks

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[jurgen36]

I formated 260 GB drives with fdisk, it seems to do the job ok, I do not know if there is a limit in size for Fdisk, one of my students reported that he formated a 1 terrabyte sata drive using Fdisk but I can not verify this. By the way try not to use goback at all, it can and will give major problems in your hardware and software system. There are many submissions written about it. Regards

Jurgen

 

[garebo]

Thanks Jurgen36.

Reading this over, i realize i have asked too many questions and should have done it better.
However, please feel free to answer any of the questions or add any info. I will keep all the info i get and sort it out.
Thanks

At bootdisk.com I found there is a new fdisk for hard drives over, i think, the 64 gig mark. You simply download it and install it on a windows98 boot disk and overwrite the existing fdisk.


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[jurgen36]

It should not be neccesary if you have a Win 98 SE boot disk. This are the boot disks we are using here. Regards

Jurgen

 

[garebo]

Part of the reason i was asking about formatting hard drives in removable cases like firewire and usb was that i had tried to format a hard drive in a firewire case and couldnt.
I tried another unit i have, a usb2.0 and the drive is formatting now. I can partition and format from a removable in win xp.
And win xp will format fat32 or NTFS i see.
That answers some of my questions.
Not happy to hear bad news about goback as i was one of the first to ever buy it, back when Wildfile company started out. It had lots of probs then but i have been using it all along and never seemed to have a prob so i will have to go read up on that.
The reason i used it prior to win xp is obvious, win98se didnt have that feature and winme wasnt worth installing.
However, i have run into situations where system restore, for whatever reason wouldnt work but goback would. And i have also had the reverse, goback wouldnt work but system restore would.

thanks for the info so far.
Any more?



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[garebo]

Jurgen36, I was posting same time as you, sorry about that.
Can you use a win98sse boot disk on a P4 win xp pro system?
Seems to me i tried and failed, maybe i better try again.


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