How do I reformat a hard drive when running XP?

[Nutty]

I've reformatted the hard drive before using the XP cdrom. What I want to
do is reformat the drive using a bootable recovery disk. However, when
doing the standard DOS command of format c: it tells me that there is no c
drive. How do I go about formatting the drive with a recovery disk? I've
heard that reformatting with just the XP cd rom will leave data on the
drive. Thanks for any help on this.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I've reformatted the hard drive before using the XP cdrom. What I want to
do is reformat the drive using a bootable recovery disk. However, when
doing the standard DOS command of format c: it tells me that there is no
c
drive. How do I go about formatting the drive with a recovery disk? I've
heard that reformatting with just the XP cd rom will leave data on the
drive. Thanks for any help on this.

You've heard incorrectly.

Boot with your XP CD like you were going to install it, follow the steps
until it asks which partition to install on, DELETE the partitions.

*poof*

Stop the installtion unless you want XP reinstalled.

If that doesn't give you the amount of erasure you want, now boot with a
boot diskette (or CD you make) from www.bootdisk.com and format it using the
normal commands.. Or FDISK.. Or both..

 

[Ron Martell]

I've reformatted the hard drive before using the XP cdrom. What I want to
do is reformat the drive using a bootable recovery disk. However, when
doing the standard DOS command of format c: it tells me that there is no c
drive. How do I go about formatting the drive with a recovery disk? I've
heard that reformatting with just the XP cd rom will leave data on the
drive. Thanks for any help on this.

What you describe is what will happen if you were using the NTFS file
system with Windows XP. A standard Windows 95/98/Me boot disk will
not read NTFS partitions and therefore cannot access the hard drive.

Instead of reformatting when you use the boot disk you can use FDISK
and delete the non-DOS partition on the hard drive. Then when you
boot with the XP CDROM to reinstall XP it will create a new partition,
format the empty partition, and then do the install.

p.s. I have never heard of an instance where intact data was left on
the drive after it was formatted.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."