Format hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter andy
  • Start date Start date
A

andy

P have two hard drives as C: 69GB and G 37GB both have an
OS of XP Pro. I want to format my C: drive to use for
movie makeing.But when I try to format I receive a message.
Windows can not format this drive. Quit any disk utilities
or other programes that are useing this drive, and make
sure no windows is dispaying the contents of the drive.
Then try again. What am I doing wrong.
Thanks
andy
 
have you booted up from ur C drive and trying to format the same. hope not.
try booting from some other source and then format the drives.
 
If not, try safe mode and format the other drive, failing
this pop in your winxp bootable disc follow propms and
when it gets to the partition part, chose the partition
you want to format (C:?) hit D, then enter, then L -
restart the machine and go back into the windows that is
installed on the other drives, if you dont want to disk
this - put the hard drive you want to format in another
computer, as a slave - then format it from that machine
and put it back (yeh, i know long winded but it does work)

Matthew
 
andy said:
P have two hard drives as C: 69GB and G 37GB both have an
OS of XP Pro. I want to format my C: drive to use for
movie makeing.But when I try to format I receive a message.
Windows can not format this drive. Quit any disk utilities
or other programes that are useing this drive, and make
sure no windows is dispaying the contents of the drive.
Then try again. What am I doing wrong.
Thanks
andy
Click to expand...

1. Make drive G: the master in a master/slave configuration.
2. Boot to bootable floppy and make drive G: partition active.
3. Boot to OS.
4. Format drive "old" drive C: (which will now have a new drive letter
assigned by the OS)

Don't forget to backup any personal files!
 
andy said:
P have two hard drives as C: 69GB and G 37GB both have an
OS of XP Pro. I want to format my C: drive to use for
movie makeing.But when I try to format I receive a message.
Windows can not format this drive
Click to expand...


You cannot format the drive that the system is running on, it is like
cutting off the branch of the tree that you are sitting on. Nor the one
that the initial boot is from. You presumably actually boot into the C:
drive and then the dual boot facility is used to load the system on G:

Presuming you mean two physical drives and not two partitions on one
mechanism

What you should be able to do *if* your BIOS will allow the initial boot
to be from either drive is to copy the boot files ntldr ntdetect.com
and boot.ini over from C: to G:

Then set to boot that drive and do so, selecting now the system on it
(it will still see the drive letters the same:. that would leave C not
in use and able to be formatted
 
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