Format system disk without CD or floppy

[DevilDoAll]

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to format a system-disk ( c: ) from that disk itself, ie. without using a CD or floppy.
If I have to use/install a simple share- or freeware software for that, no problem.
OS = W2K pro + SP4

Any suggestions ?

Thx.

Bart

Visit us at :

http://www.hdp.be

 

[vacunita]

You can't format a drive from within itself. Where would the formatting software run when its starts formatting itself.
Think about it. Even if the formatting software allowed it, there would be a point where the software would have to erase itself from the drive, yet continue running!!.

You'll have to take the drive and connect it to another PC so you can format it from the other drive. There is no other way around it.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[xwb]

The way I normally do it is to partition the drive: 2G for whatever and the rest for the OS. Format the 2G partition as FAT16 then copy the whole OS source to it. Reboot and then go into the OS source and type "winnt". That will boot up the installer and you can do whatever to the remainder of the disk. The only drawback is that everything is now installed on D and D is your main disk. When the primary partition is FAT16, you can load up any OS from DOS3.3 to Linux.

The only problem one I've found is FreeDos. That does something strange to the bootloader but a sys C: from a DOS floppy fixes that.

 

[vacunita]

The problem here is there is no Floppy or CD to boot from. Any thing that can be done must be done from a separate media.

How do you partition the drive you booted from? It's like sawing off the branch you are sitting on.




----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[xwb]

Can you run something like Partition Magic to split the drive?

 

[G0AOZ]

If the BIOS allows it, how about booting from a USB device?

ROGER - G0AOZ.