old 10gb hard drive for format and new 120 gb drive for IBM PII

[porabai]

Hello all

I have couple of issues:

Mine is IBM PII aptiva pc with 10gb hard drive with windows98.

i got it partitioned with system commander and break up is 3gb for win98 and 7gb for win2k. I am currently using system commander menu for booting to either of o/s, mostly logging to win2k.

Now i would like to format my whole hard drive and make it as single partition and load win xp.
I had changed the booting sequence in setup but i am not able to boot thru cd as the system is prompting with system commander menu with win98/win2k.

Any suggestions as how i can remove systemcommander from my pc and able to format with ntfs for loading win xp.

also I have another hard drive which is 120gb. I called the IBM tech support to make sure that this hard drive works on my pc and he said it works. any suggestions as what i should do to put this harddrive and remove the old harddrive.

thanks in advance
porabai

 

[Brona]

Hi,

I recommend using free KillDisk software to erase your drive. KillDisk erases the whole HDD, it is impossible to recover any data after using it. KillDisk also supports some highly secure erase algorithms such as DoD M5220 and Guttman's. After using KillDisk you should re-partition and re-format your drive to use it from scrath. Head to

http://www.killdisk.com

for more info and download.

 

[wolluf]

porabai - if you boot from XP install disk, its got its own partitioning tools (use D key to delete, C key to create) - you can use them to delete the current 2 partitions and create a new single partition to install XP into (I think someone mentioned this in your other thread).

Bit confused as to rest of your question - sounds like you want to install xp on 10GB drive then get rid!

first thing - try the drive in the machine - see if its recognised in the bios (never mind what the tech said - you need to check it. I've just had to upgrade the bios in a PIII machine to get it to recognise disks that big, so reckon there's a good chance your machine won't - at least not without a bios upgrade). If the drive is recognised, just install XP on there!

Also - is the machine up to running XP reasonably - PII what speed? You said 384MB RAM which is ok, but it will run slowly on for example a 300mhz machine.

 

[porabai]

Hi Wolluf,

Thanks for the update. the main problem is i am not able to boot thru win xp cd due to system commander. I think system commander overrides all these booting sequence. I had already changed the sequence in setup first to cd and then to hard drive and then floppy. but still it is going to system commander for the booting to win98/or win2k.

secondly i had spoken to IBM Tech support to get the bios update but unfortunately they said they dont have any updates for that machine as its too old and they dont have any updates after 2000, but they said that this system supports any harddrive upto 127gb and i have to try it now formatting on my pc.

will definetely update you all on this.


also thanks to brona on the advice. I got the stuff downloaded from killdisk.com and will plan accordingly.