While I await my new (reconditioned) drive from Maxtor I'd like to know
how most of you partition and format new drives for a Windows system.
Varys with which particular 'Windows system'
and whether the drive is the OS boot drive or not.
1) Use Maxtor MaxBlast 3 software or similar for other brands of HDD.
I always avoid those, some do terminally stupid stuff
like loading bios overlays when it isnt necessary.
2) use DOS FDISK and FORMAT commands.
I do mostly do it that way with the Win9x family.
Not essential tho with a non OS boot drive, you
can do the formatting particularly from within Win.
Or 3) some other utility.
Quite often, particularly when I am going to clone
a drive or restore an image file. In that situation
Drive Image or Ghost can handle the partitioning and
formatting as part of the clone or restore process.
and 4) use the OS, particularly with
a boot drive and a clean OS install.
With XP for example its simplest to just boot the XP CD and
it gives you the opportunity to partition and format the drive.
The Win9x family will auto partition and format the drive
if its not been partitioned and formatted, and its easy to
just format the partition using whats normally in the
\Win9x folder or close on the CD when you boot from
the CD just prior to a Win9x or ME install.
