HELP... starting from Scratch with New or Used Hard Drive

[Heonis]

HELP... starting from Scratch with a New or Used Hard Drive.

I need a "universal floppy disk" (or SetUp disk) for setting up the hard drive and having CD-Rom support in DOS. Where do I download it? What files do I need? I have a Windows 98se setup boot disk and a WD hard drive floppy disk.

.... First Off let me explain that the C drive is Removable so I can replace it with another. #1 will have Windows 98se, #2 will have Windows 2000 Pro, #3 will have Windows XP Home on it. This way I can run any operation system on the computer.
.... Also each one of the drives will have the Windows CD copied onto the hard drive, to be install from the hard dive, not from the CD. This way everytime I install something new on the system, it will not asks you to insert the CD, it will go to the "C:\install" directory instead.

.... Now back to the beginning, after I have this "SetUp Floppy Disk", what do I do next? Do I, #1 turn on the computer with this SetUp Disk in A: drive and hold down the F8 key to go into A: drive? #2 then select CD-Rom support? #3 fdisk the C: hard drive, correct? Here it will ask questions in what to do. I do not need any partitions because the computer will have another hard drive to store all other files. (.doc, .txt and so on)
.... please tell what all I need to do.

.... Please Help .... Thanks ....

NOTE: I will be saving all this information on a floppy and print it just in case something Goofs Up and I have to start all over again.

[davidgsmith]

Hello Heonis,
You will still need to partition and format all 3 HD's.
Here's a place to learn how to do that. http://www.geocities.com/politalk/dos/partiton.htm

I believe Windows 98 and 2000 and XP all have different fdisk and format programs.
So you will need boot disks for each. I think you can get them at www.bootdisk.com .

Have fun !
Dave

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[Vernon Frazee]

A couple of notes to add to davidgsmith's response.[list=1][*]All hard drives need to be partitioned ... even if you're only going to use a single partition. Each partition must then be formatted.
[*]Before you can partition a hard drive the correct hard drive settings must be entered in the system's CMOS/BIOS Setup. If your system's CMOS/BIOS Setup has an "Auto-Detect" I'd use it. This will also make it easier when swapping hard drives.[/list=a]