Best way to format hard drive

[painbird]

I am having some major problems with win-2000 PRO. I would like to do a complete re-install then load win-xp-pro. What is the best way to re-formate my hard drive to do this. I have never had to do this before.

Thanks..

 

[ming]

1. Find a Win98 boot disk. Stick it in the A: drive and start your machine.
2. Once fully started, run FDisk, delete ALL logical and primary drives.
3. Create a primary drive, then any logical drives you may want.
4. FDisk will then verify integrity of the drives AND locate/mark bad sectors on the disk.
5. Once, FDisk has finished, Exit FDisk and run Format C: (and any logical partitions you may have created).
6. Reboot and setup Windows from CD.

I use this method because recently I've installed Windows about 4 times, and within a week of each install, my pc became unbootable. After each install I ran scandisk/chkdsk but could not find anything wrong so I thought my sister messed around with the machine. But this was not the case because I finally decided to use FDisk which found bad sectors on the disk. Windows chkdsk/scandisk never found/fixed the errors.

 

[rnielsen151]

Or boot from the win xp cd and you can format and partition your drive with the install

 

[ming]

Or boot from the win xp cd and you can format and partition your drive with the install

It would be better to do a low-level format to check integrity and get rid of absolutely everything than just format the surface of the disk.
Win98 boot disk or DOS6.22 is the last OS that enables users to 'clean' out their drives and corrects some errors that WinME/2k/XP cannot do.

 

[painbird]

I do not have a win98 boot disk. + Am going to go with the XP pro - upgrade. Is there a way I can download a win98 boot disk?

 

[painbird]

What do you think of this

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Downright_pages/downrights_bootdisks.htm

 

[painbird]

If I go with the win-98 way which version?

1st ed, 2nd ed?

http://www.techtips4u.com/downloads/

 

[cpugeniusmv]

stick the XP upgrade disk in with windows running, and make sure you take a peek in the advanced options it presents in there (one of them is to do a CLEAN INSTALL...you want this. make sure you back up your files.)

you will be given the opportunity to format the partition in setup. there's no need for a boot floppy.

 

[ming]

stick the XP upgrade disk in with windows running, and make sure you take a peek in the advanced options it presents in there (one of them is to do a CLEAN INSTALL...you want this. make sure you back up your files.)

you will be given the opportunity to format the partition in setup. there's no need for a boot floppy.

No man!! Use the Win98 boot disk. Doesn't matter if it's 1st or 2nd version, they both use the same DOS 6.22 as far as I know.
Reason why I'm insisting on using Win98 boot disk is that I've had disk problems when I bought my first laptop and again recently as I've already explained.
I've used Win ME boot disk to format my laptop before, showed no errors so I continued to install windows... after a few days it becomes unbootable. So I use Win98 boot disk, and find that the HD was corrupt with many bad sectors found.

As mentioned above, I used Win98 boot disk recently to find bad sectors on my home pc that I've been trying to install Windows XP 4 times with problems.

 

[j79zlr]

I've never had a problem just doing the formatting with the XP CD in probably 100 attempts. A Low level format takes forever and really isn't necessary and cant be run from a 98 boot disk, you need a disk utility from the hard drive manufacturer.

 

[LeeJend]

Use the 98 SE (number 2) boot disk if you feel you must do a reformat the hard way.

You would be better off running the diagnostics disk that came with the HD if you think it has problems. If you don't have the diagnistics disk check the web site for your HD manufacturer. I know Western Digital has a complete set on their web site for downloading and making a diagnostics floppy.

When you reinstall use the NTFS file system not FAT32.

BTW Ming FDISK does not do a "low level format". That requires special software and is normally only done at the factory. All FDISK does is a more extensive check of the media surface for damage and updates the bad sector tables on the HD. You would be better off running the diagnostics disk that came with the HD.

Nuts he beat me by 7 minutes.

 

[ming]

Ahh yeah, thought I got mixed up with the manufacturer tools.
Still, Win98 boot disk helps a lot.

 

[painbird]

My pc came with win 2000-pro (used) without the win 2000 pro install CD. I've been having major problems with my internet conection. There were over 30 posts on my problem in this forum. So I would like to buy XE. I do own win-95 and could probably buy win-98 cheap. Load one of these and use "win-xp-home ed" (upgrade). I can reformat with the win 98 Bootdisk. What do you think?

 

[Daeron Tinúviel]

just use the XP CD, in case u need a format tool or else use Hiren Boot CD.....I hate floopies, they're a piece of crap

 

[melon]

I think that a low-level format is completely unnecessary, unless you have some documents that you want to destroy and prevent from being recovered, although if you're that paranoid, you probably have to do it about ten times in a row, because I've heard that a police-seized hard drive can have its data recovered, even after several low-level formats.

If finding a Win 98 CD is that difficult, don't bother with it. Just use the Windows XP disk and boot from it. It has worked excellently with most everyone here.

Melon