I just installed a new 60gb Western Dig hard drive in my computer and want to know the best way to format it?
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I just installed a new 60gb Western Dig hard drive in my computer and want to know the best way to format it?
LOL Win Xp will format it for you ..NTFS !!!
Ok I got it formatted but now I have another question. I now have my C drive....primary partition and the D drive which is a logical drive on the same hard drive. Is it possible to combine them through Windows XP?
Once XP is installed, the only way is through third-party software. Someone can probably chime in with the name, which escapes me, of a free one.
partition magic
partition magic 8.0 to be exact
regards
Western Digital has a brilliant tool called Data Lifegaurd downloadable off their site. Its a doddle with that, partitioning into as many as you look with ease. Thats what I used. EASY it was. :DQuote:
Originally posted by Raydee
I just installed a new 60gb Western Dig hard drive in my computer and want to know the best way to format it?
Believe me, Partition Magic is bloated CRAP.
I tried the software that came with the drive and it said that it didn't support NTFS and it would not format or partition the drive!
If the OS has not been installed, you may create as many partitions as you like and format each with a Win 98 boot disk but only have FAT32 partitions.
Remember that Win XP will restrict the partition size under FAT32 to less than 32 GB.
The XP disk will format either as FAT32 or NTFS.
After the OS has been installed, the options are Partition Magic 8 as mentioned already or Ranish (which I have no knowledge of as to suitability).
Whilst PM8 may well be "bloatware" I have yet to see a better software for the purpose for which it has been designed.
A quick look at the Western Digital site and at Data Lifeguard suggests that it is a replacement for EZ-BIOS which is a BIOS overlay software to fool the computer BIOS limit on the size of hard drive it was designed to accept.
Personally, having used EZ-BIOS before, I would not use it.
Re read Sparky472's response, specifically the bit in red.Quote:
Originally posted by sparky472
Once XP is installed, the only way is through third-party software. Someone can probably chime in with the name, which escapes me, of a free one.
Last time I looked Partition Magic 8.0 was not free
Ranish is what I was thinking of.
Actually, he could use the evaluation version of PartitionMagic to accomplish what he needs to do........and that would be free.