How do I unformat my harddrive in windows XP? 2

[GreyFusion]

I formatted my external harddrive with windows XP, but I have to unformat it and wipe everything out so I can format it with a ME computer and back up the files on the ME computer. Anyway to do this?? Thanks.

 

[ibmtech65]

It is not going to matter. As long as the current format on the external drive is one that ME can recognize you do not have to change it to match your internal drives.

 

[GreyFusion]

The format is NTFS with 4096 allocation. Can ME read that format?

 

[ibmtech65]

I assume this is a USB external drive so just plug it into the ME computer and see if it works.
If it does not it will tell you it can not read that type of format and you should be able to re-format it from ME to match what ME is compat with but NTFS should be ok.

 

[GreyFusion]

I plugged it in and it asks for a driver or something.

 

[wolluf]

You'll need to remove the ntfs partition in order to create a fat32 one (ME can't do anything with ntfs). If its < 32GB you can use XP to create the fat32 partition (after removing the ntfs one), otherwise you'll need to use ME's fdisk to create the fat32 partition.

 

[nlm9802]

why not just plug it back into the xp computer, go to disk management, select the partition, and format it again with fat32?
ME won't read NTFS..
another option would be boot to an xp cd, delete the partition, and then boot to ME.

 

[GreyFusion]

What if I just convert the NTFS format to fat32 using partionmagic with my XP computer?

 

[GreyFusion]

My ME computer is only 8GB. It's older + it's a laptop.

 

[wolluf]

greyfusion - PM sounds a good idea - just wondered why you haven't already tried that if you have PM!

 

[GreyFusion]

I tried it, but it didn't work. So I ended up unformating the entire harddrive and formatting to FAt32. Still didn't work so I reinstalled the driver it was asking for from the windows ME disc. The driver was supposedly installed already, but hey, now its working fine. Now I gotta reformat the laptop again, but this time with windows XP. I only needed to get my harddrive working on it so I can save all my moms files on it for work. Now I'm gonna have a cool little tweaked out laptop. I'm good at tweaking with XP. Not ME though. Thanks guys. I'm Transferring the files as we speak.

 

[GreyFusion]

I have all the tools I need for partioning and tweaking and such. Just haven't tried it because I never tried PM with my enternal HD.

 

[Daire]

if the computers are not to far away you could network them using a cross over cable and share out the drive from the XP machine so that you can copy directly from the ME machine to the xp machine.

might save you a lot of hassle and be useful for other tasks also - print sharing, internet connection sharing, LAN gaming, etc

 

[GreyFusion]

Actually the computers are in two different houses....lol... But, I did it. Everythings set. All files were saved on external HD and I reformatted the laptop with windows XP Pro