How do you format a NTFS drive?

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Mike89

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I want to clean install Windows XP. The drive is currently NTFS. I want to completely format it and then go FAT 32, then install XP.

I understand that I cannot now use a Windows 98 startup disk to format it in DOS, being it's NTFS. Is this correct?

So how would I do it?
 
OK....... Goto your bios and set it up to boot from the CD-ROM first.

Then put your XP cd in the drive and re-boot.......

When the option comes up, have it do a clean install. You will see the option to format the drive. From there you can format it to FAT32.

Hope this helps.........

:cool:
 
use the XP install cd it will format it to NTFS or FAT32. Y do you want fat32 though??
 
Well for a couple of reasons. I have always been used to being able to go to DOS (even though I am sure no DOS expert) to fdisk/format/repartition etc. Now I wouldn't know how to do this.

Also to flash a motherboard BIOS (using a Windows 98 startup disk to go to DOS). I wouldn't know how to do that either.

My son originally installed Windows XP on his friend's computer. He said that during the install he saw no option to format in anything other than NTFS so he did it (he wanted to do it in FAT32). He must have missed something along the way.

Well anyway after the install was complete he was testing the GeForce 3 Ti 200 on it. He got like 100 plus fps. He then installed the motherboard drivers and the scores dropped to like 68 fps. Whoa! This is an ALI chipset and I have heard of things like this happening.

So anyway we couldn't figure out how to 'undo' this big drop in performance, so we are going to install XP from scratch again and leave those dam motherboard drivers out of the picture to get the performance like it originally was.

What a hassle!
 
Originally posted by Mike89
Well for a couple of reasons. I have always been used to being able to go to DOS (even though I am sure no DOS expert) to fdisk/format/repartition etc. Now I wouldn't know how to do this. You still can. The 98 startup disk will still do these things on an ntfs volume... it just see's it as a non-dos partition. A better partitioning solution can be found using PowerQuest's Partition Magic 7.0 - I highly recommend it.

Also to flash a motherboard BIOS (using a Windows 98 startup disk to go to DOS). I wouldn't know how to do that either. This hasn't changed at all. When you boot to your floppy or CD drive that's completely independent from your hard drive so that's really not an issue.

My son originally installed Windows XP on his friend's computer. He said that during the install he saw no option to format in anything other than NTFS so he did it (he wanted to do it in FAT32). He must have missed something along the way.

Well anyway after the install was complete he was testing the GeForce 3 Ti 200 on it. He got like 100 plus fps. He then installed the motherboard drivers and the scores dropped to like 68 fps. Whoa! This is an ALI chipset and I have heard of things like this happening. XP has a driver 'rollback' feature, have you tried that?

So anyway we couldn't figure out how to 'undo' this big drop in performance, so we are going to install XP from scratch again and leave those dam motherboard drivers out of the picture to get the performance like it originally was. Nothing wrong with that, but I strongly recommend stepping up to NTFS (New Technology File System). I'd lay odds that every manufacturer is running and testing their XP hardware and drivers from ntfs.

What a hassle!
 
He wants to CLEAN install XP. No reason to confuse the boy !


The easy way is to boot from the XP cd and go from there. It will give you the option to format the drive in Fat and NTFS.

Plan and simple !!!!




:cool:
 

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