|
Sometimes you just have to format. I equate it to
a baptism for your computer, you are washing away all the
sins from it, making it new, fresh, giving it a new beginning.
I know people feel formatting can be a traumatic experience,
but if it's any comfort to you, most computer pros format
their computers more often then most beginners. The
difference is: Computer Geeks can get their computer
up and running in an hour after a format (maybe less time
than that) and a beginner might get it up and running in
4 to 5 hours (sometimes longer). So let me walk you
through the important things you should do before, during,
and after a format:
Pre-Format steps (The stuff before you go nuts and format):
- Backup
your important data - Just because you have to format
doesn't mean you have to lose everything on your computer.
Backup outlook, important documents, downloads, just
about anything you can burn to a disk that will make
your computer like home again. Just think of this
step as if you're moving...you pack up all the junk
you want before you move into the new place.
- Startup
Disk - Make a bootable startup disk, in Windows 98,
ME, 2k, and XP they have where you can make a startup
disk. So, get yourself a startup disk.
- Go
to your device manager and write down the hard drive
components you have on your computer. This will
make it easier if you can't find the drivers you need,
you'll be able to get them off the net or the original
CD's that came with your computer or components.
FDisk - Getting the partition ready (SKIP THIS STEP IF
YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR EXISTING PARTITIONS)
If you already have a partition on your hard drive you
can skip this step. I personally like to make a
new partition and really have a clean start when installing
an operating system or if I want to manage the partition
size of a large hard drive. So here are the steps:
- Insert
the startup disk that you made in the first part of
this tutorial. Restart your computer and your
computer will boot from the floppy disk drive.
In Windows (98 and ME) you'll get a question asking
if you want cd support or not, go ahead and scroll down
to: "Start Computer Without CD-Rom support"
- At
the command prompt type fdisk
- If
your hard drive is bigger than 512 mb (ugh, like who's
isn't now) It will ask if you want large disk support.
Type in Y or yes
You'll then see an option menu that contains the follow
choices:
- Create DOS partition
or Logical DOS Drive
- Set Active Partition
- Delete Partition or
Logical DOS Drive
- Display Partition information
- Change current fixed
disk drive
Once
you get to this you'll have a few options and there are
a few things you need to know. If you already have
a DOS partition and you want to delete it then you go
to 3. Delete Partition or Logical DOS Drive and you'll
select to delete this drive.
To create
a new partition on your hard drive you select 1. Create
DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive then press enter. Then
on the next menu select 1. Create Primary DOS Partition
and then press Enter. After you do this you'll get
the message "Do you wish to use the maximum available
size for primary DOS partition?" That basically
is assigning how much space you want on the partition
(only for Fat38 or NTFS if you want to install using a
FAT 16 you'll have to follow a few different steps not
covered in this tutorial...mainly because I haven't formatted
anything in FAT16 in such a long time I forgot off the
top of my head). If you have a large hard drive
you might want to break it up into smaller partitions.
For now let's say you just want to use the whole hard
drive space for this partition. You'll type Y and
then Enter. After doing this you'll hit Esc and
then Esc to quit Fdisk.
This
will create one large partition hard drive...(if you've
wanted to make multiple partitions you would basically
not assign all the space to the one partition and then
go 1. Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive and then
on the second menu you would hit choice 2. Create Extended
DOS Partition and then you can create another partition
with the remaining space.)
Formatting
your Hard Drive
-
Insert
Start Up Disk
-
Get
to the command prompt
-
Type
Format C: (or whatever letter is assigned to the drive
you want to format) **Note if
you get a message like "Bad
command or file name" you'll have to extract
the format.com file to do this just type:
extract
ebd.cab format.com at the command prompt and then
type Format C:
-
The
startup disk will ask you "WARNING, ALL DATA
ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format
(Y/N)?" Now once you hit Y everything on
your hard drive will be deleted. Type Y
-
After
the format is complete it will ask "Volume label
(11 characters, ENTER for none)?" Either put
a name in or just hit enter
-
There
you have it a formatted hard drive!!! Ready
for you to install an operating system on...so get
going and install one already.
|
|
