Formating my new SATA drive

[dr_roberts49]

I'm sure this has been covered before. I apologize if it has. I installed my Maxtor SATA 160 GB drive. I already have 2 IDE drives, and I'm running XP Pro. On boot-up, my BIOS shows the SATA, and Sandra does too. Since it is not formatted, it does not show up in "My Computer".

I usually run fdisk and then format, when prepping a new drive. Do I do the same thing with the SATA drive? I remember seeing comments about booting from the XP Pro CD and then formatting from there. That sounds good to me. I'm not running RAID, I have my BIOS set to run the SATA as another drive.

BTW, I also finished getting everything transfered into my new Aspire X-Super Alien case. This was my first mod, and it was a challenge to get wires behind the mobo and labled. I also spent a lot of time with setting up the fans (six case fans) and the heat sensors, and then covering and arranging them with looming. I took several pictures, and will post them as soon as I figure out how

Thanking all in advance,

Robert

[JohnE.]

Does the drive show up in Disk Management (Right-click My Computer>Manage>)? If so, you can format it from there...

Odd, I just answered the same question in another thread, heh.

[dr_roberts49]

Thanks JohnE. I checked, and it's not listed. I guess I need to do it the old fashion way?

Robert

[JohnE.]

Doh, if it's not formatted it ain't gonna show up in Disk Management... guess I shouldn't try to figure too much out before breakfast, heh.

You could use a Win98 boot floppy and run fdisk and format on it to make it Fat32 and then format again in Disk Management if you want to make it NTFS. Format to NTFS is preferred over convert to NTFS because you lose a little performance if you just convert.

[dr_roberts49]

I guess we both need a shot of breakfast Logically, I should have thought this out on my own. SATA is new to me, but it should behave just any other hard drive. I'll follow your guidelines, JohnE, and I really appreciate your help and advice.

I was up until 5am getting all my stuff transplanted into my new computer case, and then modding it out (my first). I was up before noon, and should probably take a nap I'll keep you posted. Thanks again.

Robert

[Jarhed7276]

If you're going to use fdisk on a drive that size you will need the updated version.



Updated Fdisk

Gerry

After rereading the page from the link even this won't work since the drive is over 137 gig.

This hotfix is not designed for 48-bit logical block addressing (LBA) hard disks, and it is not supported on hard disks larger than 137 GB.

[dr_roberts49]

I fdisked the drive just fine, then I ran XP Disk Management and formated the drive from there. It formated out to 158GB. Took about 30 minutes.

What I would like to do now, is "move" some programs from my primary IDE drive to the SATA. I had Norton System-Works when I was still running Windows 98SE, and it had an app that allowed me to move applications. I didn't upgrade System-Works when I went to XP Pro, so it doesn't work. Are there any freeware/shareware apps out there that will let me do this? Thanks to everyone for their help and advice. All is right with the world

Robert

[JohnE.]

Unfortunately, if there was such a freeware application it would probably work in much the same way as Norton's install monitor in that it would have to monitor the installation in order to uninstall/move it.

Since the freeware application would be a new install it wouldn't have the installation tracking data to be able to move previously installed programs. It may be able to move something really simple but would probably cause errors with anything that had created numerous registry entries and dll/ocx dependancies.

[dr_roberts49]

Thanks again, JohnE. I think I'll pass on that. I'm either going to buy Norton's upgrade, or just bite the bullet and reinstall the apps and then their updates. All in all, a lot less hassle when compared to errors in the old registry

Robert