format hd

Johnh

Baseband Member
Messages
71
i have a brand new hard drive that i am adding to my computer, and honestly ive only formatted a hd once with some help, and it was sometime ago so i dont really remember what to do.

i already have one hd in and i just want to add the second one in but im not sure how to format it.

also im thinking about getting vista aswell, but i want to be able to choose between xp and vista
how do i do that??

i know i sound like a total noob and these q's have probably been posted a lot of times

but if you could help that would be awesome!! :-D

thanks!
 
get into the contorl panel then click administarvie tools your new hd should show up right click it and click format and it will give you the options there.
 
You missed the part about going to Computer Management from Administrative tools (alternatively you can right click My Computer and click Manage)....then format the new hdd (I suggest using the NTFS format)

As for putting Vista on it, once you have formatted the hdd, boot the Vista disc and install Vista onto the new hdd (not the old one or you will overwrite you're XP)...follow the steps and honky dory, when they are both installed, when you boot up it will ask you to select which one you wanna boot, XP or Vista

Matt
 
You can format it if you like but I bet it's all ready to go right out of the box. :p
Right click on it in explorer and check properties.................
 
Brian_Fenner said:
You can format it if you like but I bet it's all ready to go right out of the box. :p
Right click on it in explorer and check properties.................

When I purchased my Maxtor hdd, I had to format it before I could use it??

Matt
 
You missed the part about going to Computer Management from Administrative tools (alternatively you can right click My Computer and click Manage)....then format the new hdd (I suggest using the NTFS format)

As for putting Vista on it, once you have formatted the hdd, boot the Vista disc and install Vista onto the new hdd (not the old one or you will overwrite you're XP)...follow the steps and honky dory, when they are both installed, when you boot up it will ask you to select which one you wanna boot, XP or Vista

Matt

Ya tell me about it! I was running a dual boot until this morning. Vista on 1 HD & XP on the other. Well I had them in a boot order just had to hit F8 if I wanted to boot off a different HD. Well guess what I did. I installed some update and Vista would not boot in anything but safemode. So I said to hell with it and did a reformat. Well in the process it didn't reconize the bootmngr so I tryed it again. Guess why it didn't reconize it ya thats right I installed it on the wrong partition overwriting my current XP. So I formatted my vista only drive and installed it on my other drive. Man I wasn't happy when I realized what I did. Thankfully I have a backup of all my files and music or I'd really be upset.

My advise don't get drunk and decide to screw around with your computer it doesn't end well :(
 
MattieDaShark83 said:
Ya tell me about it! I was running a dual boot until this morning. Vista on 1 HD & XP on the other. Well I had them in a boot order just had to hit F8 if I wanted to boot off a different HD. Well guess what I did. I installed some update and Vista would not boot in anything but safemode. So I said to hell with it and did a reformat. Well in the process it didn't reconize the bootmngr so I tryed it again. Guess why it didn't reconize it ya thats right I installed it on the wrong partition overwriting my current XP. So I formatted my vista only drive and installed it on my other drive. Man I wasn't happy when I realized what I did. Thankfully I have a backup of all my files and music or I'd really be upset.

My advise don't get drunk and decide to screw around with your computer it doesn't end well

At least you got a backup of everything, thats the main thing! Don't know what I would do if I had a harddrive crash lol

Matt
 
thanks for the help!


im pretty sure i wont have a problem with the whole getting drunk thing lol
considering i dont.

anyway hopefully everything works and i dont lose all my data :-\

what do people reccomend for backing up music files? other than just putting it on the ipod? lol
 
Well, I'm running a network with a couple of other PCs, so I usually backup what I want from mine onto another, and what I want from another to mine, if that makes sense...Another good option is to either burn files you need to DVD, or to buy a seperate harddrive for the soul purpose of backing up files

Matt
 
i would recomend backing up onto a CD/DVD like Matty said to be safe. I would also de-authorise any itunes purchases you have so if you do accidentally wipe your XP install out, you don't ahve an authorised machine in never-never land.

if you are using sata drives tho, why not just un-plug the XP drive so you can guarentee you don't wipe that out by accident? I would say do this with normal IDE drives, but the boot sector might get messed up on the second drive then.
 
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