new hard drive installation

[Roy Colson]

I am replacing a Maxtor 6E030L0 that Maxtors diagnostics tells me that it is
failing.

I will replace it with a Seagate Barracuda ST389911A.

My computer is a Dell Dimension 2350 running XP Home.

I intend to do a clean install of windows on the new drive. My question is
am I better off using Seagate's Disk Wizard or my Windows reinstallation CD
to partition and format the new drive.

Thanks,

Roy

 

[Jerry]

Before you even start installing - what size is the drive and what version
of XP is on the CD? If the drive is larger than 137Gb then the XP CD must be
SP1 or SP2.

 

[Roy Colson]

The drive is 80 GB. I have both an original SP1 and a slipped streamed SP2.

 

[Roy Colson]

I made a typo in the Seagate part number. It should read ST380011A.

 

[Guest]

I have heard that xp install format uses a inefficient file cluster size if
using NTFS
but I wouldn't really know the difference, I would use the xp install cd for
formatting
and install simply due to only using one cd, and I'm familiar with it.

 

[DL]

Use the win cd to partition and format

I made a typo in the Seagate part number. It should read ST380011A.

 

[Jerry]

Boot from the SP2 CD and use the included tools to format and install.