Fdisk on new Hard Drive? help...

  • Thread starter Thread starter trogdor
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trogdor

trogdor

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Okay I just built my very first PC...got everything from newegg and it came yesterday...

Everything seemed to go very smoothly, except...

I can't seem to get the hard drive partitioned...it's a Western Digital 7200rpm 80GB. When I boot up in BIOS it recognizes the drive, telling me the make, size, etc. etc...
But when I try to run Fdisk it says "unable to read fixed disk"

It appears that the drive and connection are fine since it sees it in BIOS.

I have old windows XP software that is JUST the OS and not disk formatting or other crap, so I need to partition and format the drive first...

Any ideas? I got the drive OEM so there was no driver disk or anything (if there is such a thing for a hard drive). I'm going to check the WD webpage..

thanks for any suggestions

*almost* proud of my first handbuilt pc,
Jon
 
You do not want to use FDisk if you are using NTFS. It will give you an error when you boot up, because FDisk is a Win98/Fat32 app.

Start the computer, and go into the BIOS.

Set the computer to boot from the CDROM, throw the XP disk in there and have at it. It will see it, say it says an un-partitioned drive, and ask how/if you want to partition it, and if you want to use FAT32 or NTFS.

Use NTFS.

It will walk you through the rest of the steps.

Very easy.
 
polaris - your boot off xp cd was the right way to go, but you are incorrect on running fdisk on NTFS. If this were true that programs were programmed to FAT32 and NTFS then most programs wouldnt work on NTFS becuase most are programmed in FAT32 ;). He just needed to boot off the floppy drive with a boot disk and then run fdisk. He is however limited to only partitioning to FAT32 but it can easily be converted to NTFS later.

danny
 
thanks for the quick replies... I found on the western digital site an application that you can boot to that will partition and format the drive...

My XP CD doesn't have fdisk on it...I think it's just the OS files because I tried booting from the CD and it said something to the effect of "no partitioned hard drive present, you must partition and format hard drive...setup cannot continue, press any key to reboot, etc."

I found and downloaded the XP boot disks however, so maybe those will work...

Should I use the western digital software or the xp boot disks that i downloaded?
 
Fdisk is old news and inappropriate. Boot from the XP CDROM...if you just built the machine it will support booting from the CD. You don't run fdisk at all, creating and formatting partitions will all be done during the XP setup process.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Oops, just read your reply.....is that a valid copy of XP? Yeah go ahead and try the boot disks...otherwise go to:

www.bootdisks.com

and download the Windows 98 boot disk, which will have fdisk and format on it. Don't worry that it's for 98, it doesn't matter. The XP setup may require that you convert the filesystem to NTFS though, but that's no big deal.

Slackmaster 2000
 
ok I'm just an idiot. HOURS of looking for a solution and it turned out to be a tiny @#$#%! jumper on the back of the hard drive set to 'master'. Well, when you only have one drive on the IDE channel apparently you don't use the jumper at all (RTFM right?).

So one more (small) issue:

I used the windows 98 boot disk, then installed xp.

When i boot up my system i get a little dos menu that asks me which operating system i would like to launch: windows xp professional or just plain windows.

How do i get it to just automatically load xp?
 
Hi Trogdor,
To set the default boot up to XP:-

Go to start/settings/control panel/ system /advanced/startup and recovery

Click on the settings button next to startup and recovery

Set the default operating system at the top of this page.

Incidentally for all those people who have had to re-install an additional version of Winxp on their system and want to get rid of the previous boot; You can use edit here to completely remove any rogue boot up options, then manually (careful!) delete the old OS directory.
 
darnold said:
polaris - your boot off xp cd was the right way to go, but you are incorrect on running fdisk on NTFS. If this were true that programs were programmed to FAT32 and NTFS then most programs wouldnt work on NTFS becuase most are programmed in FAT32 ;). He just needed to boot off the floppy drive with a boot disk and then run fdisk. He is however limited to only partitioning to FAT32 but it can easily be converted to NTFS later.

danny
Click to expand...

I beg to differ, because of speaking from experience. It may not be a FAT32 issue, but whenever I have partitioned and formatted using FDISK to install WIn2K/XP, it has given me errors upon boot up, after installation.

It is documented on Microsoft's tech support site.

There's a work around, but it's easier to just boot from the CD and do over.

I have run into this twice already. If you're interested in the exact problem, I can find the error code for you, I have it written down somewhere.
 
You are correct Polaris....he should definately have booted from the CD and let setup do the work. FAT32 is not the recommended file system for large drives anymore.

Shame on us for not asking him about his hard drive though! I was thinking he had a bogus copy of XP or something, because that error sure didn't seem right. Oh well, I'll remember that one!

Slackmaster 2000
 
So are you guys saying I should convert to NTFS? because i used the western digital disk utility to format in fat32.

It gave me the option to change when i installed xp but i wasn't sure if i should or not...I will be recording soon when i get my delta 1010 so maybe NTFS would be beneficial.

would converting to NTFS mean erasing everything on the drive? If so, then could I at least format the audio partition of my 80gb hd (60gig nothing on it yet) and leave the OS partition (20gig) alone?
 
I have never done this. But apparently you can convert your present hard disc's partition to NTFS without losing data. In suggesting this you should always back up anyway! There is a psuedo msdos prompt type command (start/run/cmd) called convert that I believe does this. Type "help convert" at the command prompt to see the options.
 
By default XP won't format anything over 32GB with FAT32, only NTFS. NTFS is definately the better file system....good performance and is more reliable.

You can convert the filesystem to NTFS without losing any data by opening a command shell and entering:

convert c: /FS:NTFS

Now you always run the risk of losing data...but if you just put the machine together it's no biggie.

And in the future don't use those disks that come with new hard drives....they're usually unnecessary junk.

Anyhow, you could probably get away with not worrying about any of this if you wanted to...it's not some big major deal that's going to make or break your DAW.

Slackmaster 2000
 
polaris - ahh i see what you are saying. i thought you were implying that you just plain out couldnt run fdisk on an NTFS partition. Sounded like you were talking about how you cant run a windows based program in dos. I understand what you are talking about now.

Another thing though. Your correct about Windows XP not having fdisk, but i forgot to mention they have a partition called "partition" or something ;). Actually ive never run this program so i dunno really what it does. Could just be a partition repair program.

slackmaster2k - guess ill be converting my drives to NTFS. I heard a rumor that recording drives suffer with NTFS. I kinda didnt believe it but i trusted what they said. But i think i will switch to NTFS now.

danny
 
I also wanted to mention quickly of a danger of using NTFS.

Just remember that only windows XP and windows 2k recognizes NTFS.

A couple of years ago when windows 2k first came out, i partitioned the drive to NTFS. At the time i was a chronic formatter and i was not familiar with NTFS and 2k. I did the format the old DOS boot-up/format way. (BTW, my recording drive was FAT32). So i do format c:\ and let it format.

Next thing i know, my recording drive was gone with all my recent work (from paying customers even) was all gone. I lost alot of sleep that night...

It was just a simple mistake that i should have been more careful with. But it was about 1:00 in the morning and i was trying to get it done.

Which brings up another advice...be very careful while formatting even if youve done it a million times.

One of the best ways ive found to format and repartition is using partition magic. That program does wonders.

danny
 
hey not to turn this into a windows help forum or anything...

but does anyone know if there's a way to designate your own hotkeys in xp for various tasks i.e. closing, maximizing windows, launching apps etc. ?
 
darnold said:
I also wanted to mention quickly of a danger of using NTFS.

Just remember that only windows XP and windows 2k recognizes NTFS.

A couple of years ago when windows 2k first came out, i partitioned the drive to NTFS. At the time i was a chronic formatter and i was not familiar with NTFS and 2k. I did the format the old DOS boot-up/format way. (BTW, my recording drive was FAT32). So i do format c:\ and let it format.

Next thing i know, my recording drive was gone with all my recent work (from paying customers even) was all gone. I lost alot of sleep that night...

It was just a simple mistake that i should have been more careful with. But it was about 1:00 in the morning and i was trying to get it done.

Which brings up another advice...be very careful while formatting even if youve done it a million times.

One of the best ways ive found to format and repartition is using partition magic. That program does wonders.

danny
Click to expand...

Don't mean to be a butthead, but I don't see what this has to do with NTFS? You formatted a drive...no matter what the filesystem is that's going to get rid of everything.

P.S. programs like EasyRecovery can sometimes recover files even from reformatted drives.

Slackmaster 2000
 
There's nothing wrong with NTFS, but there is with FAT32. FAT32 sucks, in my humble opinion :D
 
Last edited:
Emeric said:
I disagree. I've been working with computers for 200 years and I find FAT32 works just fine for me. It even sounds better than NTFS, phatter. IMHO.
Click to expand...

It was always an unstable turd for me, but to each their own I guess.
 
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