Formatting hard drive?

[Pablo]

I have a good 80 gig hard drive.

I want to Format it for NTFS. It's currently FAT32.

How to?

 

[The Critic]

Hey Pabs,
Set your BIOS to boot from CD...then it'll proceed the windows setup menu. At that point, it'll ask you to format your hard drive and NTFS will be an option.

 

[Pablo]

Don't have a bootable CD. I could make one I suppose for Win 2000.

This is the D: drive.

 

[Pablo]

On second thought my free PC only has a CD-ROM. I could steal the old CD R/R from the old PC I guess.

 

[Razl]

More info needed for the best method.

Is this going on an existing OS as a second drive or are you loading a new OS (Win 2000, XP, etc)? Wan's way makes sense for loading a new OS. If it's a back up drive for an existing system, you can do it within windows.

 

[Pablo]

This will be my D: second drive for Windows 2000.

How do I do it within windows?

 

[The Critic]

Pabs, is this an actual Win2000 disk? If so, it is going to be bootable. But, if your C drive is still functional to an extent, try booting it into safe mode and running Win 2K setup from there...but have it install to the D:\ directory.

 

[Pablo]

OK let me try again.

My PC is running fine. I simply want to add the D: drive for more space. But the older hard drive from 2001 was formatted FAT32. I've cleared it off, it's empty and I want to install it and format it for NTFS.

 

[k1xv]

Look at this page

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/format_XP.htm

Put your cursor on the third paragraph down on the left side column

 

[Mamala Bay]

Most brand hard drive have bootable disk that you can download from their sites.

I would go that route first, a lot easier.

 

[Mamala Bay]

You need to clear the FAT32 Partition, then install a primary partition in NTFS.

 

[Gurkha]

When you boot off either Win2K or XP CD, delete partition before you format it to the choice your your file type ie either NTFS or FAT32.

 

[denver1]

You don't need to format your drive to have an ntfs file system you can convert it from fat 32 to ntfs and keep all your data if thats easier. Just google fat32 to ntfs and you should get some appropriate links. I have done this myself before quire a while ago and it works.

 

[Pablo]

k1xv nailed it - that was dog easy!

All set - thanks guys!

 

[beanoil]

If it is a D drive (slave), put it in, boot to windows and run the disk manager utility. You can do whatever you want at that point.

 

[theguru]

In win200, control panel, administartive tasks, drives and you can partition and format as you like. Even make it bootable.

 

[Pablo]

Thanks guru - obviously the last time I formatted a drive was the DOS prompt days and I was NOT going back there. So simple in Win2000, I suppose I would have found it sooner or later, but asking you guys is the lazy way!