Hard drive formating help needed

[Agamon]

I have a question for those more technically savvy than myself. My google-fu hasn't been able to answer it very well.

I have obtained an older PC with a 60 gig drive that I'd like to add to my PC as slave. My problem is that the PC has the Win ME OS and no floppy drive, which is making it difficult to format. So the question is, how do I create a CD boot disk to reformat a Win ME hard drive?

 

[Fenlock]

at http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ you can download a boot disk with fdisk on.

but if you only want to use the harddisk from the old pc, you can just move it to your regular pc. remember to set jumbers correctly for master/slave configuration. Once installed in you pc you can reformat it for windows/linux/whatever.

//F

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

at http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ you can download a boot disk with fdisk on.

but if you only want to use the harddisk from the old pc, you can just move it to your regular pc. remember to set jumbers correctly for master/slave configuration. Once installed in you pc you can reformat it for windows/linux/whatever.

//F

What he said. You may have to change jumpers on both drives. Some had three settings -- Single, Master and Slave. Check to make sure the jumper for the drive you are using now is set to Master, set the drive from the old machine to slave, and you should be good to go. Your current PC should see it as the next available drive letter. If you're using XP, you can use the disk manager to re-arrange the drive letters to suit.

 

[Agamon]

Yep, I know about how to add drives to PCs. My new PC doesn't have a floppy drive either. So I figured I might as well clean it up before installing it. Thanks.

 

[ssampier]

Which when one of the many reasons I don't miss the Win9x systems (Windows ME included). With Windows 2000 and XP the disk is bootable and has an built-in partition manager/format tool.

 

[IronWolf]

Which when one of the many reasons I don't miss the Win9x systems (Windows ME included). With Windows 2000 and XP the disk is bootable and has an built-in partition manager/format tool.

Bootable install CDs are nice. I also make heavy use of Knoppix for various needs, even on Windows systems. Including wiping disks when needed and data recovery.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Bootable install CDs are nice. I also make heavy use of Knoppix for various needs, even on Windows systems. Including wiping disks when needed and data recovery.

BartPE is indispensible if you're messing with Windows a lot, too.

 

[Mercule]

I have obtained an older PC with a 60 gig drive that I'd like to add to my PC as slave. My problem is that the PC has the Win ME OS and no floppy drive, which is making it difficult to format. So the question is, how do I create a CD boot disk to reformat a Win ME hard drive?

Are you saying your current PC is running ME or the hard drive you want to reformat? If it's just the old HD, you should only need to set your jumpers and XP will recognize it as a FAT32 drive, which you can then play with.

If your current computer is ME, go with the above suggestions. Or, better yet, go get thee an XP install disk (unless you're holding out for Vista). ME is a kinda crappy OS -- and that's coming from someone who never had any crashes with it.

 

[Agamon]

My new PC has XP (in fact, my old PC had XP). It's the old drive (from a third PC that was a familiy member's) that has ME. I wasn't sure if I could install it without formating it first, but I don't want ME on it anymore, so I'l be using the boot CD to format either way.

BartPE was what I found scouring the net. It wanted to sit down and figure it out, but I knew there had to be a boot ISO somewhere.

 

[Mercule]

You shouldn't need a boot CD to format it. If you open up "My Computer" and right-click on the drive, one of the options is "Format".

If you want to FDisk or something, you can use your XP install disk as a boot disk. I reformat every 8 months or so (old habit from DOS days, plus I play with lots of beta stuff) and use my XP disk every time.

Seriously, you're making this a lot more complex than it needs to be, unless you're trying something really bizarre or fancy that I'm not catching.