reformatting and partitioning hard drive

[zapzapzapzap64]

Its a long story, but here's where I'm at.... I have a 40GB hard drive
partitioned as follows:

5GB FAT32
35GB NTFS

What's the simplest way of re-formatting and re-organising this drive
to be simply 40GB FAT32 so that I can install windows 98 on it? I have
the windows 98 setup cd, but it can't see the NTFS partition.

I've heard of 2 pieces of software that might be able to help me with
this... boot itng and partition magic, but would like to know what
others think. I'm looking for the simplest way out...

ps. I have no floppy drive, so any method that doesn't require one
would be good as it will save me having to get one - but if needs
must...

cheers!

 

[Yeff]

I've heard of 2 pieces of software that might be able to help me with
this... boot itng and partition magic, but would like to know what
others think.

BING's your best bet. You can download a fully functional trial
version: <http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html>

 

[Andy Cooper]

BING's your best bet. You can download a fully functional trial
version: <http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html>

Partition Magic is very magical, wiped out a complete hard-drive of
mine (

Andy

 

[zapzapzapzap64]

Thank you.
I've had a look through the documentation, and it mentions installing
it on my hard drive. I remember someone saying elsewhere that BING
could be run straight from the CD instead...

....maybe its a silly question but if I install it on my hard drive and
then I format that hard drive its obviously not going to be there
anymore... so should I just make a bootable BING CD as instructed and
then boot up with it, and not install it on my hard drive? Sorry, I've
not manipulated my hard drive like this before beyond formatting single
partitioned drives, so I want to be sure I don't screw up!

 

[Vanguard]

Its a long story, but here's where I'm at.... I have a 40GB hard drive
partitioned as follows:

5GB FAT32
35GB NTFS

What's the simplest way of re-formatting and re-organising this drive
to be simply 40GB FAT32 so that I can install windows 98 on it? I have
the windows 98 setup cd, but it can't see the NTFS partition.

I've heard of 2 pieces of software that might be able to help me with
this... boot itng and partition magic, but would like to know what
others think. I'm looking for the simplest way out...

ps. I have no floppy drive, so any method that doesn't require one
would be good as it will save me having to get one - but if needs
must...

Is this a laptop where you cannot install a floppy drive? If it is a
desktop, yes, you should be able to install an $8 floppy drive. So just how
are you going to install Windows 98 without a floppy drive? The Windows 98
CD is not bootable.

You are saying that FDISK (or whatever you are using but never mentioned)
won't list all the partitions? It doesn't show the NTFS partition as some
"other" partition type? FDISK can still delete "other" partitions because
all it does is update the partition table in the MBR. It doesn't touch the
partitions themselves (and why you can recover from changing the partition
table to get back your partitions). I've used FDISK from a DOS boot floppy
to wipe NTFS partitions, so it's hard to believe that the setup program ran
from the Windows 98 CD will not also delete "other" partitions.

You could try using the UltimateBootCD (free;
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com). It is a bootable CD with lots of utilities
on it, some of which are for partition management. It also has disk wiping
tools. The Ranish Partition Manager is included (I haven't used it) which
seems to do a lot of what Partition Magic does.

 

[kony]

Its a long story, but here's where I'm at.... I have a 40GB hard drive
partitioned as follows:

5GB FAT32
35GB NTFS

What's the simplest way of re-formatting and re-organising this drive
to be simply 40GB FAT32 so that I can install windows 98 on it? I have
the windows 98 setup cd, but it can't see the NTFS partition.

I don't mean to second-guess you, but do you need it to be
one big 40GB partition? If 5Gb sufficed previously for
NT/2K/XP, I'd think 5GB would be enough for similar use on
9x too.

Either way, FAT32 or NTFS is just the logical formatting,
things like FDISK should still see the partitions. So, if
you wanted to delete and create a secondary partition, that
is, a logical partition of 35GB in the extended partition,
after it's creation it's basically a matter of formatting it
to FAT32, DOS format command or do so in Win98.

If you do want to wipe whole drive, delete everything, then
FDISK can do that, delete all partitions then create one
large one, format it. The basic Win98 boot floppy has the
fdisk and format tools on it, is bootable.

I've heard of 2 pieces of software that might be able to help me with
this... boot itng and partition magic, but would like to know what
others think. I'm looking for the simplest way out...

ps. I have no floppy drive, so any method that doesn't require one
would be good as it will save me having to get one - but if needs
must...

Well if you google there are probably some floppy images out
there you can use Nero or other CDRW authoring programs to
make a bootable CDR with whatever you want on it.

The HDD manufacturer's installation and troubleshooting CD
may too, if you have one available or can download & create
from their website.

 

[Andy]

Its a long story, but here's where I'm at.... I have a 40GB hard drive
partitioned as follows:

5GB FAT32
35GB NTFS

What's the simplest way of re-formatting and re-organising this drive
to be simply 40GB FAT32 so that I can install windows 98 on it? I have
the windows 98 setup cd, but it can't see the NTFS partition.

If you have Windows NT/2000/XP installation CD, boot from it and use
setup to delete the partitions. Then quit.

 

[zapzapzapzap64]

many thanks for the advice... my win 98 cd is bootable, despite what a
previous poster might think, so I might try running fdisk from that.
Though I've read that fdisk can't or has trouble deleting NTFS
partitions - http://fdisk.radified.com/fdisk_partition.htm - so I'll
make sure I make a bootable copy of BING to try if fdisk doesn't work.

 

[kony]

many thanks for the advice... my win 98 cd is bootable, despite what a
previous poster might think, so I might try running fdisk from that.
Though I've read that fdisk can't or has trouble deleting NTFS
partitions - http://fdisk.radified.com/fdisk_partition.htm - so I'll
make sure I make a bootable copy of BING to try if fdisk doesn't work.

NTFS is only a filesystem format, it still depends on a
compatible partition structure. FDISK will likely call it a
non-DOS partition, but still delete it. So it's the same
process, you're just deleting the non-dos, the extended, and
the primary, so disk is then empty, and creating the one
large partition. I'd still wonder if you need one large
parittion though, it can be useful to segregate data by
having a 2nd partition, you could just delete the non-dos
partition, create one of the then-free space and format it
to fat32 as usual.

 

[saturnlee]

Cheapest Way:Knoppix and QtPartEd

Download Knoppix ISO image about 600MB, burn it into CD and run it. Go
to system and choose QtpartED. Knoppix is all Graphics User inteface,
so it is very easy. No need to install Knopppix, it ( debian-base linux
) run on the CD.

 

[james hanley]

Thank you.
I've had a look through the documentation, and it mentions installing
it on my hard drive. I remember someone saying elsewhere that BING
could be run straight from the CD instead...

...maybe its a silly question but if I install it on my hard drive and
then I format that hard drive its obviously not going to be there
anymore... so should I just make a bootable BING CD as instructed and
then boot up with it, and not install it on my hard drive? Sorry, I've
not manipulated my hard drive like this before beyond formatting single
partitioned drives, so I want to be sure I don't screw up!

Try BING,
report back

I'll just add though
It seems you don't necessarily want to resize you jut want to delete the
partitions and create new ones.. Surely anything can do that! The Win XP
setup may let you create an NTFS partition or FAT32 partition of whatever
size. The Win98 CD will let you create a FAT32 partition.

But you could resize, it's very quick - I have partition magic, so I use
that.

You only format partitions. no such thing as formatting a drive. If you want
to you can delete all the partitions. Or easily format all FAT32 partitions,
from a BOOTABLE CD. You can probably format your NTFS partition if it's
Win XP, from within XP.

you can do anything really, your data isn't at risk, as you say you want to
format and remove all partitions anyway.

 

[james hanley]

many thanks for the advice... my win 98 cd is bootable, despite what a
previous poster might think, so I might try running fdisk from that.
Though I've read that fdisk can't or has trouble deleting NTFS
partitions - http://fdisk.radified.com/fdisk_partition.htm - so I'll
make sure I make a bootable copy of BING to try if fdisk doesn't work.

oh, you don't want to tough the NTFS. So forget BING and partition magic.
Plus you don't care for the data on there. Just use FDISK and delete and
recreate the FAT32 partition so it's the size you want.

 

[zapzapzapzap64]

I used BING in the end, and it was a doddle... really simple interface,
and deleting, creating, re-sizing etc all went smoothly. In short -
can't recommend it highly enough for anyone who wants to do all this
partition stuff.

Thanks for the advice from everyone.