Formatting HD & WinXP 3

[brotherbobby]

I want to format my HDs and start from scratch, but I have heard that it is a difficult process when you have NTFS drives.

I have formatted HDs several times using FAT drives. I am a little afraid to attempt it with these drives because I don't want to be stuck without a PC if it doesn't turn out.

Has anybody formatted their NTFS drives and had success.

I will have to install Win98 onto my drive and then use my upgrade CD for WinXP, so I will need for at least one of my drives to be converted back to FAT for that to take place.

If someone has attempted this and done a successful format and re-installation, please let me know.

Thanks for your input.

God bless you,
Bobby

 

[KDENS]

Just run your upgrade as FAT.
I F disked my hard drive and
installed XP using Fat. Worked
fine. Hope this helps you.
Abby

 

[BoyTommy]

I reformatted my IBM serval times using fat, I have a partition with the c drive as ntfs and d drive as a fat drive. works fine for me, good luck

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[wolluf]

1. You don't need to install win98 first. If you have an XP upgrade install CD, you just need the 98 install disk to show to the machine when asked during XP install.

2. XP install process has partitioning tools which let you delete & create fat, fat32 & ntfs partitions.

3. To do a clean install of XP, boot the machine using the XP install CD (you may need to change bios settings to boot from CD first). If you can't get machine to boot from the CD, you can download app which will create the 6 boot floppies to start an install and use them instead. There are links for the versions of XP on this page

http://www.bootdisk.com/original.htm.

Choose new install, and when it gets to the bit where you are prompted for location to install into, you can select any existing partition(s), and hit the D key to delete them (answer warning prompts to aggree delete). when all gone, you can create a new partition (C key). Choose the filestore type you want (fat32 or ntfs). Install will now continue - just answer questions.supply key as prompted.

Note: If you have any data you want to keep - obviously back it up before starting this as it will be wiped in the process.

 

[34534534534555]

in addition to wolluf

if you have 2 cd drives put both cds in and then point to the 98 cd drive when asked.

Why is a NTFS file system preferable over a FAT32 file system ??

TIA __________________________________
Create like a God, Command like a King, Work like a slave..

 

[thegreger]

NTFS is more secure than FAT32, it's not bad for the office environment, but for my home/gaming stuff I still use FAT32 for now.

You can also use F-DISK to remove the non-dos (NTFS) partition, and then re-partition the drive and format it again. BTW, MS has updated it's format with Windows XP. The utils can be found in the tools folder of the XP CD. Also if your using a large drive (80 gig +) be sure to use the Windows ME version of FDISK because it supports larger drives. Or just use PM...

my 2cents

G