reformating hd from scratch 1

[sybrmito]

i have a gateway 3600 desktop. its been giving me alot of problems lately. i thought the best thing i can do(besides using it as a boat anchor) is to totaly reformat it. i've uninstalled and reinstalled win98 with no luck. how can i erase everything on my hd and start fresh?

 

[fasttoon]

This is how I clean out my disk, I also follow this procedure with a new hard drive.

First of all get a good win98 boot disk.

If you can find the hard drive installation program that would help. Seagate=SeaTools, Maxtor=MaxBlastPlus2, etc.

I personally use MaxBlastPlus(1) on every drive.

1. pop in boot disk, type in fdisk and follow the menu,
enable large disk support [Y] (Y=fat32 option, N=fat16 option)
Type 3 Delete Existing Dos Partition
Type 1 Delete Primary DOS partition
Type 1 Select Primary Dos Partition
Type Volume label listed or leave blank if none
Type Y verify deletion

If you have Extended Dos Partitions, delete them as well.

2. reboot (ctrl + alt + del) type in fdisk /mbr

3. type in fdisk and follow the menu (same as above)
Type 1 Create DOS partition or Logical DOS partition
Type 1 Create Primary DOS partition (use all for entire disk or use some if you want to create additional partition)

Create additional partition.
Type 2 Create Extended DOS partition
Type 3 Create Logical DOS drive(s) in the Extended DOS partition, repeat as needed for each additional partition.

Reboot.

4. Start installing windows.
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ok thats the standard way that takes approx 20-30 min on 30gb hard drive. Here's the fast way

Do step 1 & 2, skip step 3, instead reboot with hard drive installation program and go to the partition program and type in what kind of partitions you want, the size, what type of os and the program may ask you to insert the boot floppy and less than 5 min later you are done and ready for step 4. (ps do not load EZ-bios program unless you need it)

If you have a virus, selling the drive, have more time, or just paranoid, you might want to erase the drive prior to fdisk, there is a good program called eraser that is freeware and must be used in windows. Another program is ontrack data eraser and is not freeware, however you can get this for free using IBM installation program (I think its on there, the program itself works in dos and doesn't work with all drives.) I think Seagate also has one.

Good Luck!!

 

[fasttoon]

One last thing if you have the windows installation disk you should be ok, if you have a restore disk, check and see if you have a hidden partition, if you do make sure that you don't have files on this partition, you may have to change file attributes to see hidden files, if you do then don't delete this partition as there are installation files on this hidden partition.

Good Luck!!

 

[sybrmito]

i have a problem. as i went thur the steps, i got a 'error' message that reads, "can not change partitions because disk can not be locked" and starts me back to the begining of the program. HELP, how do i lock the disk

 

[FatesWebb]

this message should not be displayed if you are booted off a bootdisk into TRUE DOS, it will happen most often if you are trying to do this while booted into windows. ARE you booting off the disk straight to a DOS prompt?

 

[sybrmito]

thank you for all your help. the reformat went very well.
everything is running perfect, better than i expected. i should do this more often(once a year).

sybrmito

 

[arfjay]

I am going to start reformatting 3-5 yr old HDs this week - never done it - came here for info - here it is - Thank you fasttoon and fateswebb for the answers and to sybrmito for asking the question. This site is unreal.