startup diskette with no access to HD?

[don2sail]

I am using windows xp with a 160 gig maxtor HD

I created a startup diskette (thru the format menu) which, when booted,
gave me and >A: prompt but no access to the hard drive (invalid drive)

I looked at maxtors emergency diskettes with no better results

I thought the whole purpose of a startup diskette was to access the hard
drives. why doesn't this work and how can I create a diskette that will
work.

 

[Gordon]

I am using windows xp with a 160 gig maxtor HD

I created a startup diskette (thru the format menu) which, when booted,
gave me and >A: prompt but no access to the hard drive (invalid drive)

I looked at maxtors emergency diskettes with no better results

I thought the whole purpose of a startup diskette was to access the hard
drives. why doesn't this work and how can I create a diskette that will
work.

AFAIAA start-up disks in XP are only used where the BIOS cannot be set up to
boot from the CD. otherwise, set the BIOS to boot from the CD.

 

[Cerridwen]

I am using windows xp with a 160 gig maxtor HD

I created a startup diskette (thru the format menu) which, when
booted, gave me and >A: prompt but no access to the hard drive
(invalid drive)

I looked at maxtors emergency diskettes with no better results

I thought the whole purpose of a startup diskette was to access the
hard drives. why doesn't this work and how can I create a diskette
that will work.

Simple. No version of DOS - even pseudo-DOS - has /ever/ been able to read
NTFS formatted drives. Boot from the XP CD.

 

[DaGunnySgt]

-----Original Message-----
I am using windows xp with a 160 gig maxtor HD

I created a startup diskette (thru the format menu) which, when booted,
gave me and >A: prompt but no access to the hard drive (invalid drive)

I looked at maxtors emergency diskettes with no better results

I thought the whole purpose of a startup diskette was to access the hard
drives. why doesn't this work and how can I create a diskette that will
work.
.
A startup disk is for and will only work with your

primary Hard-Drive which is "c" most of the times. What
is hooked -up to "H"?

 

[Yves Leclerc]

The start-up diskette which XP creates is an MS-DOS diskette. You can only
use this if the hard drive partition is formatted with FAT32. However, with
XP, it can only format a partition to 32GB with FAT32. Therefore, if you
can not see the hard drive partition, you are most likely using an NTFS
partition.

BTW: The standard XP install CD is the boot disk for XP. It contains most
of the utilities in order to access/repair XP.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

I thought the whole purpose of a startup diskette was to access the
hard drives. why doesn't this work

Presumably your hard drive uses the NTFS file system, which DOS
can't see.

and how can I create a diskette
that will work.

As a general rule, you don't need one. If you have a Windows XP
installation CD, it's bootable, and that's your emergency startup
disk.