Formatting NTFS Hard Drive

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Guest

I've dropped an NTFS hard drive in as a second hard drive and want to format
it. It won't let me though!!

Is there something tucked away in XP that will allow me to do this? The
original hard drive isn't NTFS.

Thanks
 
Mike said:
I've dropped an NTFS hard drive in as a second hard drive and want to format
it. It won't let me though!!

Is there something tucked away in XP that will allow me to do this? The
original hard drive isn't NTFS.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Please be specific! State how you're trying to format it,
why it won't let you, what the message is (if any). Say
also if you have partitioned the drive.
 
So far I've tried just adding it as a second drive, right clicking it and
selecting format.

I've also tried installing win2000 and XP home on it to delete the
partition. When i delete the partition it allows me to delete the partition
which i do. However, what I have now is XP home, Win2000 and XP Home (again)
as boot options!!

All I want to do is format it so I can use it for storage. Doesn't matter
if it comes out as FAT32 or NTFS.

Thanks.
 
You must create a partition before you can format it.
All of this you can do in the WinXP Storage Manager.
Starting a WinXP installation is a very round-about way
of managing partitions!

I recommend you click Start / Help and Support, then
type "partition" or "format" in the text box. Study the
relevant guides - there is lots of useful information there!
 
Thanks. Will do.



Pegasus (MVP) said:
You must create a partition before you can format it.
All of this you can do in the WinXP Storage Manager.
Starting a WinXP installation is a very round-about way
of managing partitions!

I recommend you click Start / Help and Support, then
type "partition" or "format" in the text box. Study the
relevant guides - there is lots of useful information there!
Click to expand...
 
Hi, Mike.

Disk Management is the tool you need for this. I guess you can say it's
"tucked away" in WinXP (and in Win2K) because so many users still haven't
found it, 3 years after WinXP and nearly 5 years since it first appeared in
Win2K. :>( Probably because it was buried under layers of mouse-clicks. A
quick way to start DM is from the Run prompt; type: diskmgmt.msc

Make DM full-screen and explore the program and its very informative Help
file. Click View and set it up to suit yourself; I like the Volume List at
the top and the Graphical View on the bottom. It will show you each hard
drive, plus each partition and logical drive, as well as the unpartitioned
space, on each HDD.

DM replaces FDISK and Format.com, which we used in MS-DOS and Win9x/ME. It
creates, deletes and formats primary and extended partitions, and logical
drives in extended partitions. It reassigns "drive" letters, like we used
to do with the Device Manager in Win9x/ME. It can't do much with the System
Partition (typically, Drive C:) or the Boot Volume (often also Drive C:),
but it manages all the other HDDs, CD/DVDs, etc. (Even in MS-DOS, to
reformat C:, we had to boot from something other than C:, usually an MS-DOS
boot floppy.)

WinXP mixes FAT and NTFS volumes seamlessly, but, unless you plan to install
Win9x/ME on this computer, use NTFS all the way. It is much more secure,
both in the sense of security from unauthorized access and in the sense of
security from hard drive glitches.

RC
 
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