Formatting hard drives

How do I format my hard drives, I have structural errors on them and cannot chkdsk /f them as it keeps saying a system or process? is using them, plus there is a lot of crap which needs removed, so I thought the easiest way is to format, never touched them for years, my system is XP professional.

 

You can't format a drive that you are using .
You may be able to format from the recovery part of the hard drive when you boot up or by reinstalling windows.

 

If you are using "Western Digital" or "Maxtor"...they both have utilities that you can boot from and then within that utility is the option to format the drive!!

Is this a spare drive...or is this the main drive with OS (windows) on it?? If it is the OS drive then just do like funky munky said...use the windows install disc, especially since you will have to reinstall windows after the drive has been formatted!!

Roger

 

It has the OS on it, but its also been partitioned wrongly and there are certain programs that I want rid off, that will not uninstall for instance boot magic and others, plus as I said there are structural errors on the HD.

 

Have you tried using partition magic?

 

If you are just wanting to start with a clean slate...then just use the windows install cd!! It will allow you to delete all the old partitions, create new ones...format the partition you want to install windows on, then it will install the os, and once you get windows going...you can go into "My Computer" and format the other partitions you may have created!!

However...as I'm guessing you already know...this will COMPLETELY wipe everything so you will want to back up any important files before you embark on this journey, and then you will have to reinstall EVERY other application/program that you want on there!!

Otherwise...you will have to use a more creative approach, as funky munky is refering to!!!

Roger

 

I agree the easiest way is to just reinstall windows and when you selected the drive it will ask you if you want to reformat the drive and/or delete partition. That's how I do it when I format.

 

Thanks guys will just re-install my OS, thats exactly what I want to do is to delete everything and then start over and re-install all of my software, as for partition magic, I do not think I will bother, however, thankyou for the advice.

 

Look at this URL Formatting hard drives

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Clean Install Windows XP

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html#steps

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