Can't format HDD

Posted by Yannick Verhoog on Feb 18, 2009

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1. • By Yannick Verhoog Feb 18, 2009

   • I'm not sure what you mean there, SanthU.
     
     I'm trying to format a harddisk, not install a cd/dvd drive.
     
     And what files are skipped during installation?

2. • By Yannick Verhoog Feb 20, 2009

   • Well I've read some more forums, and I've found out there's a lot of people with Windows XP that can't format their second harddisks.
     
     I guess I'll just have to get Vista now, since the tip SanthU gave me didn't work.
     
     
     
     Thanks for all the help,
     
     Yannick

3. • By Yannick Verhoog Feb 26, 2009

   • Well I've figured it out myself now...
     
     It appears that xp tried to address MB's on the drive that weren't there, ie trying to format 500.000 MB on a 485.000 MB disk....
     
     After manually adjusting that I could format.
     
     Thanks for all the help,
     
     Yannick

4. • By Yannick Verhoog Mar 12, 2009

   • So here's what you do:
     
     1: You build in the extra harddisk.
     
     2: You click start, rightclick My Computer, ten select manage;
     
     
     3: In the window that opens, you select the "disk management" option. you can see your 1st harddisk(disk 0) and your second
     
     (disk 1) there:
     
     
     4: There you can right-click the disk and select "create partition".
     
     Just follow the instructions on screen, create a primary or extended partition, until you reach something like this:
     
     
     5: Here is where the tricky part starts;
     
     You here have to insert the number of MB's yor partition should have. Now, for some reasons, on my pc, windows automatically inserts a number of MB's, more than are available on the disk.
     
     You should calculate the number of MB's your disk should have like this.
     
     ou take the number of bytes your harddisk has, for a 500GB that is 500 billion bytes, for a 300GB 300 billion, etcetera...
     
     This u divide by 1024, and again by 1024, and that number, rounded down, is the number of MB's your partition should be.
     
     For example; A 500.000.000.000 bytes harddisk(500GB)/1024/1024=476.837MB.
     
     I hope this helps. If it does not, I know no other solution then to try to format on a Vista pc, and then insert the HDD in your XP pc.

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