installing hard disk.. 2

[tempo21]

i have a 60 gb Maxtor HDD on an old machine that i want to add to my current system.

I am running winXP - if i simply plug it in will windows recognise it and prompt me to format it?



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[wolluf]

Windows should recognise it, but you'll need Disk Management (run diskmgmt.msc) to partition and format it. If its already partitioned/formatted (from old machine) with fat/fat32/ntfs filestore, XP should just mount it with next available drive letter.

 

[tempo21]

ok thanks.

i ave found htis disk has some useful data on it - but also has win 98 on it. Can i retreive the data then format ? its FAT32?

T3/\/\p()
tek-tips UK branch!
_________________

http://www.tempocentral.com

 

[wolluf]

should be able to - if its fat32 (assuming no overlay software used to set it up/format it), it should just appear with next drive letter in XP. So you can copy off what you want, then use disk management to reformat (repartition?) it - fat32 or ntfs.

Note: XP can only create maximum 32GB FAT32 partitions - so if you want to keep it FAT32 but wipe it, just reformat it (otherwise, if you remove partition, you'd need fdisk or another partitioning app to create new 60GB partition).

 

[tempo21]

ty 4 ur help.

T3/\/\p()
tek-tips UK branch!
_________________

http://www.tempocentral.com