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| Thread ID: 30498 | 2003-02-21 03:02:00 | Formatting a harddrive | jabba (3215) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 122873 | 2003-02-21 03:02:00 | I tried to reformat my hard drive which is formatted in NTFS with a win'98 startup disk. It couldn't "see" the hard drive. Is there a program I can get that will help | jabba (3215) | ||
| 122874 | 2003-02-21 03:07:00 | You need to use fdisk.exe. It should be on your bootdisk, or if not go here (www.bootdisk.com) | antmannz (28) | ||
| 122875 | 2003-02-21 03:07:00 | Partion magic may help Or use your winXP pro or win2000 CD to format. win98 disk won't pick it up, as the file system it uses is FAT32. |
roofus (483) | ||
| 122876 | 2003-02-21 03:08:00 | fdisk won't see the NTFS as its not FAT | roofus (483) | ||
| 122877 | 2003-02-21 03:08:00 | If you want to format it to put on Win9x it will need to be Fat16 or Fat32. If you are going to put on Windows NT / 2k / xp then it can stay as NTFS and all you need to do is boot off the CD that you have for your O/S. If you want Win9x on it run fdisk off your startup disk first and choose option 4 to delete non-dos partition then create a new one. |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 122878 | 2003-02-21 03:10:00 | Ahhh, timing :) We had a pretty interesting discussion about this a wee while ago. Basically you need either to change the ntfs file format with either a linux fdisk (easiest is Redhat) or the Win2K OS. From what Godfather mentioned you will need to load the Win2K/NT4 back on and select FAT32 as the file system. If you pop into the local library they might have a book like "Red Hat linux Bible" by Christopher Negus (or something similar) that contains cut down versions of Red Hat. Start that up and use the fdisk program to alter the file format to FAT32 or 16. |
Gorela (901) | ||
| 122879 | 2003-02-21 03:11:00 | Forgot to add: If the HDD has more than one NTFS partition then you can't use fdisk. Grab this program to delete them. www.russelltexas.com |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 122880 | 2003-02-21 03:13:00 | although CyaBro may be correct in regards to deleting a non-DOS partion. Gorela i remember the thread you are refering to, except this was different as the person (was it you?) wanted to change the first partion on the drive (the primary partion) and we found you couldn't do this without destroying the data on the whole drive, as when you remove the primary partion you take with it the extended and logical partions. |
roofus (483) | ||
| 122881 | 2003-02-21 03:23:00 | An interesting little experiment Roofus, but it was someone else who had the problem. :) And before I forget, I'm fairly sure it was Merlin and not Godfather that straightened that one out. |
Gorela (901) | ||
| 122882 | 2003-02-21 04:51:00 | Older versions of FDISK can't see NTFS partitions. There is a byte which says what the type is. Linux fdisk can change that byte (only) which can be useful for changing the type without having to start from scratch on all partitions. Since you want to scrub the NTFS disk, if the W98 can "delete non-DOS", that might work. If it can't ... Use an XP CD's FDISK (or a Linux fdisk) to delete the partition. Then use W98's FDISK to make a partition for itself. It's best to use an OS's own partitioning utility to "make" partitions. There are too many things which can go wrong. |
Graham L (2) | ||
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