formatting hard disc hello, can anyone help? if i make a ms dos startup disc with win xp can i use it to boot my computer before formatting the hard drive for win 2000 and then to install win 2000? i know u can download boot discs for win 2000 but this startup disc with xp is only one floppy. thank you
Well, the startup floppy is XP specific. 2nd, the MS DOS disk won't do you any good when trying to install 2000. You know, you can boot off the 2000 CD-ROM, right?
sorry, im still confused - i can put the startup files for 2000 on a cd and use that instead of floppies? so to format :- download startup files for 2000, put on cd/floppies restart computer using above to boot to '>' fdisk then format c:/ s restart computer with startup disc install win 2000 from cd thanks
yeh, you don't need no startup disk, just use the 2000 cd to boot, you might need to go into bios and change the sequence, so it boots of the cd-rom first...
just one question, just read your first post! are you converting from XP to 2000? any reasons? anyway, I'm not too sure if you can use the 2000 cd to boot and format the C drive, since you already have XP installed, it will prob install in on another partion? I have my very useful Win 98 boot floppy, when ever I need to re-install XP (3 Times, since around agust) I use the disk to delete the non-fat partion, create a new one, make it active, and then boot of the XP CD, in your case the 2000 CD.
Yup. Win2k/XP are completely different from Windows95/98/ME. Just boot off the CD. No need to format beforehand. Unless you cannot boot off the CD-ROM (happens on older systems), you don't need to have any sort of extra boot floppy.
Unless you want to format using a disk that came with your HDD, as that way is usually much faster than doing it through XP.
ok thanks to all . . im changing from xp becos although its not all bad i just want to see how 2000 is gonna change system stability (and besides i ruined the registry so its gotta go). I had 2 big crashes to blue screen when i had hardly anything on the system plus did u know that if u install xp on a hard drive and then don't use it for 30 days u have to ring up microsoft to reactivate windows? so im thinking bios - 1st boot = cd 2000 cd then i get a choice i presume - format or create new partition and all is well im just being safe i don't want to be left with a useless drive . . .
I've never heard of having to reactivate WinXP after 30 days of no use---not that it really affects me anyway. You'll have a choice of whether to format it when you choose where you want to install Win2k, just like in XP. You can choose FAT32 or NTFS with quick format options available. It wouldn't be a bad idea to go with a full format of NTFS, which would do a complete format rather than just reformatting the master boot record. Plus, NTFS is not noticeably slower than FAT32 and gets faster than FAT32 as the hard drive size increases. It also dawned on me that this thread isn't in the right place, so I'm moving it to the appropriate location.
What??? I can't format in NTFS using my newly downloaded MaxBlast Plus II software? Sheesh, I put it to a floppy and tested it and everything. Are you sure about this? Also, is it a clear-cut choice to use NTFS over FAT32 anyway? Or is there some debate? If HDD size matters then the one I got is 80GB.
I haven't used the new MaxBlast Plus because it simply wouldn't work and I could do it easier anyway. Here's a good reason to use NTFS over FAT32: better security. Also, power goes out every now and then. With FAT32 you get your disks scanned after a power failure. Since using NTFS on a Win2k box (and later XP), that never has come up. And yes, as the size of the partition increases, the more efficient NTFS gets. FAT32 loses effectiveness around 32-40GB's despite being able be used for much higher capacities.
Okay, I suppose I will format in NTFS then. I'll have to contact Maxtor to see if MBP can do that. What went wrong when you tried to use MBP?
Wouldn't see the CD that had the stuff on it and the floppy disk was pretty much worthless. Anymore, I don't need to partiton and format my disks anymore since I don't wipe the partitioned drives everytime I do a reinstall.
Oh, well this is a new HDD so I must. Since I bought the drive OEM, it did not come with the CD or floppy. So, I downloaded the program myself, and put it on a floppy. I tried booting up with it and it launched perfectly, with mouse support and all. Obviously I didn't format my drive, since this is still my current one, but I know for sure that I can boot from it and get to its menu. According to www.maxtor.com, MBP can format the drive in about five minutes, where as with XP it can take up to and over an hour. Is this true?
Depends on the format level if it's full or quick and the size of the drive. Doing a full format will take sometime. Maxtor is probably telling the truth, but if they're only doing FAT32, that wont help you with NTFS.
