Reformating HD & Issues

I am attempting to reformat my hard drive and start from scratch to fix some issues I have with the USB drives. I hate doing this - and it's been a few years, I'm kind of confused about what to do.

I have 2 internal and 2 external drives. The master drive, c, is where I keep the programs and sware to run things. The slave, d, is where I keep data and documentation, etc. The 2 external drives are for clients' data.

I have a Restore CD that came with my Emachine D2046, a Windows XP which I purchased last year when I had to reinstall windows, and 2 Western Digital CDs which came with the internal drives (both look like the same version).

All three CDs, it seems, can be used to reformat the C drive. I'm not sure which to use.

Additionally, the internal drives are 160gb, but the bios only recognizes 137gb. I know that when I purchased them, there was some type of fix for this. Seems to me, I went into the bios and typed in the parameters for the drives - in order to get the system to recognize the full capacity of the drive.

This scares me - I don't know why though, since a long time ago I went to using a separate drive for my data, and I have the software CDs all filed. I also have kept the software that I downloaded in a download file on the data drive, so I have it as well.

I've searched the net for instructions on reformating/wiping the hard drive - and they all use the Windows XP CD. But I don't know if that's what's best in my situation. I was thinking I should start with the restore (it would have the original drivers for the USB ports, original stuff on the computer), then I could upgrade using the XP CD. And do I need the Western Dig CD at all? Should I use that first to wipe the hard drive and partition it, then go to the restore?

Thanks,
carol

 

Unplug all other drives with the exception of C: when reformatting. Doing so makes sure that the format utility doesn't go wild when doing its thing, as it does at times. I believe that SP2 solved the 137 gig. limitation in Windows. Use your recovery CD to reformat C:, and then use Windows Update to upgrade to SP3. After this is completed, reattach your drives one at a time to make sure that they are recognized by Windows. Hope this helps!

 

Since you have an XP cd and I take it thats what you have installed, you have another choice, a non-destructive reinstall of XP. This will reinstall the system files but not the drivers or your data or software. Afterwords you would have to install sp3 to bring your criticals as close to uptodate as possible and then visit the MS site for the rest.

read here and see if you think it will help:

Code:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ATER1BJCZNSN0QSNDLQSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=189400897&_requestid=319026

If that doesn't fix your USB drives problem then you can consider a complete format.