Formatting

[Mal1]

I have 2 hard drives on my comp, the first one (oldest one) being a 37gb FAT drive and the new one being a 77gb NTFS drive.
I have windows XP SP2 and I'm looking into installing a version of linux on the old hard drive. (I have knoppix on CD but may get a different one to install for a permanent version). My problem, well query, comes when I hardly ever 'use' my old hard drive. All new files and programs etc are installed/saved on the new hard drive. BUT windows was installed prior to adding the new hard drive ( I think, honestly I can't remember now.. is there anyway to check? ) and therefore, on the old drive. I've never formatted a hard disk (not been able to as its a family pc.. self explanatory) and I was wondering if there was any way to tell if my D (old) drive is actually in use at all? It has folders and stuff still on it.. mostly old rubbish, but it does have windows dir's too, which obviously, having never formatted or being able to remember if thats the windows install from way back, I don't wish to delete and then realised I'm screwed. (although norton go back could probably help me there if anything did happen I suppose..)
I thought of maybe going into BIOS and looking at the boot options for the old drive, can you actually stop it from booting it at all? or just change the order?
All help much appreciated

 

[trance565]

ya, in bios, u can stop it from booting, or u could get inside ur comp, and just take the power cable out of the hdd, that would stop it from being booted or turned on at all, just make sure u have power off, and the cord is out of the comp b4 u do that, and if windows still loads, then ur fine, and what u could do, is u could partition the big drive to 2 37gig parts, and then isntall linux on one of the partitions, may be easier to use ur old hdd tho

 

[crazyman143]

yah I don't think that it is being used but I would reccomend you just take the cord out insted of messing with the bios cause you could screw up stuff it there.
so if there are any problems you can just plug it back in.
as far as installing linux on your other hard drive, well that is something I've been trying to figure out also. I have heard you need something called a partition manager, and there is one called partition magic, but it is risky.

 

[zero4zero]

Well if your not sure if the stuff on your D drive is good, in windows explorer click TOOLS, show hidden files. Then create a new folder on your C drive (call it OldD for instance) and then cut everything you have on your D and paste it in your OldD folder you created on your C drive.
Now to format the D drive, all you have to do is go to your control panel>administrative tools>computer management>storage and finally disk management. There you will see your D drive, right clic on it and then FORMAT.