how to properly format hard drives in xp

[SNAAKE]

sorry kinda off topic(non arcade) but can someone post some info on formatting the drive. I know I gotta do it through computer management but I am wondering about the settings and stuff. thanks in advance

[headkaze]

What do you need to know? You just format it in NTFS, that's it.

[patrickmaher]

Maybe it's more of disk type and partitioning info that you are looking for?

You probably want to setup a basic disk and a single primary partition that is the full size of the drive. If you want to split it into more than one drive letter you should be able to figure that out from the partitioning wizard.

Check out this info on setting up a basic disk.

[Joystick Jerk]

Open explorer, right click drive, select Format, done.

[loadman]

sorry kinda off topic(non arcade) but can someone post some info on formatting the drive. I know I gotta do it through computer management but I am wondering about the settings and stuff. thanks in advance

Yeah.. If its a brand new drive you need to mount/activate it in computer management or it won't show up in 'My computer'  From there you format it from there or from the My computer Icon

Pic attached

[Joystick Jerk]

Yeah.. If its a brand new drive you need to mount/activate it in computer management or it won't show up in 'My computer'

Since when? Any properly functioning computer running XP will automatically recognize a new drive and mount it.

[loadman]

Yeah.. If its a brand new drive you need to mount/activate it in computer management or it won't show up in 'My computer'

Since when? Any properly functioning computer running XP will automatically recognize a new drive and mount it.

Nothing to do with the computer.  You obviously just have not been in the situation. Some new drives are pre-initilised for MS Windows and some aren't.  Same effect is achieved if you put your drive in after it has been used on another operating system like UNIX.

I think that windows auto mounts if it is the first drive but you may have to do it yourself on some drives if you put in additional

[headkaze]

Yeah.. If its a brand new drive you need to mount/activate it in computer management or it won't show up in 'My computer'

Since when? Any properly functioning computer running XP will automatically recognize a new drive and mount it.

Nothing to do with the computer.  You obviously just have not been in the situation. Some new drives are pre-initilised for MS Windows and some aren't.  Same effect is achieved if you put your drive in after it has been used on another operating system like UNIX.

I think that windows auto mounts if it is the first drive but you may have to do it yourself on some drives if you put in additional

I know what your saying loadman it's happened to me a few times when one of my drives would disconnect (I think because of a lose cable) I would play with the plug and it would show up again but I would have to manually enable it in Disk Management for it to show up in My Computer.

[Joystick Jerk]

I think that windows auto mounts if it is the first drive but you may have to do it yourself on some drives if you put in additional

Nope.

[SNAAKE]

well..everything is working but I am curious about the difference between "basic" and "dynamic" disk type. I had a problem before(thread here) and my spare drives werent showing then I had to rewrite the partition again and they worked again. now I cleaned up my spare drive and trying to figure out how I should format it.

[Malenko]

you cant boot a dynamic drive, and you typically do that for RAID arrays

[NickG]

Don't go dynamic or you may regret it later.
Anecdote:  My friend and I were trying to back up data from my computer onto his hard drive, which we connected to my computer to speed up the transfer.  The drive showed up, but the partition information seemed wrong.  Under disk management there were a few very small partitions of only a few megabytes which spanned the entire length of the bar graph, and they were marked as "foreign"