How do you reformat a drive that has a previous Win 2K OS installed

[phlynch]

I just got a new harddrive and installed Win 2k. I took my old harddrive (which was smaller) with win 2k installed on it, and wanted to reformat it blank so i could use it as a storage drive. However, when i go to Computer Management, and attempt to format the old drive, it only sees a couple of Gigs (that was the empty space left on the old drive). I tried formatting using NTFS and primary partition but it only formats the couple of gigs that were free anyways. The harddrive was a 20 GB harddrive and i can only format 7 Gigs. The previous installation of Win 2k on this drive does not appear to be accessible and it basically makes the disk look smaller. Is this because of the boot sector installed on this drive which is not accessible to me when i use my new harddrive with a new install of Win2K.

Is there a way to do a complete low level format which would erase everything. Then i could go back to comp managment, and format the disk as a Basic NTFS with one partition which is what i want. Thanks for any advice.

 

[MattWray]

You could try booting from a win98 boot disk and run FDISK.. I have never done it, but I believe that is how it is done.. Matt Wray
CCNA, MCP
mwray77518@yahoo.com

 

[tsessoms51]

The best option is to remove the old partitions from "outside" of Windows. Either boot off a cd or a floppy, it can be Dos 6, Win9x, NT or W2k. I've even done it from a Linux disk. Just make double sure you delete the partion(s)on the right drive...

 

[garwain]

I'd suggest getting a copy of partition magic. Nice GUI to work with, and you can move/resize/change format of any partition you want. I've actually swictched a NTFS drive to FAT16 to use on an older machine using win95, and then to EXT2 for a linux box and back to NTFS, without loosing any data off the drive.

 

[Jaqqo]

many HDD makers post a formatting utility on their website - you could always download that and reformat using this utility. (I assume this isn't your only PC).