Modern mode to set up a new hard drive?

[Albin]

Hi group,

This is a question concerning Dos and Windows, not Linux.

With todays very big hard drives, 100 GB+, the "old" ways of
setting up a new hd with "fdisk" and "format" from Dos prompt
are at best very tedious and slow. At times fdisk seems to mess
up what it is supposed to do.

I have had a couple of cases of "Wrong media type" after I
have already spent about an hour partitioning and formating.
And it is not a good time for such. You want to move on to
installing or whatever.

I like to split a drive into about three partitions, having the
OS on its own etc. I know this is a case of differing opinions
and I really don´t want to go over those arguments again here.

I have several computers of my own and I also help out friends
fixing their machines. But I do not do this professionally. The
computers are different, and so are the disks and the version
of Windows.

When I boot from a Windows CD I can install from that one, but
IIRC there is not really any option of partitioning the drive
on installation.

Do you have any good suggestions for strategy and tools to use?
Several partitions, remember?


Lars
Stockholm

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi group,

Lo groupy,

This is a question concerning Dos and Windows, not Linux.

How dare you ?

With todays very big hard drives, 100 GB+, the "old"
ways of setting up a new hd with "fdisk" and "format"
from Dos prompt are at best very tedious and slow.

Thats overstating it considerably.

At times fdisk seems to mess up what it is supposed to do.

Nope, its just got one of the odder user interfaces that can
bite you on the arse if you dont know what you are doing.

I have had a couple of cases of "Wrong media type" after I
have already spent about an hour partitioning and formating.

With just fdisk and format ? Dont believe it.

And it is not a good time for such. You
want to move on to installing or whatever.
Sure.

I like to split a drive into about three partitions, having the
OS on its own etc. I know this is a case of differing opinions
and I really don´t want to go over those arguments again here.

I have several computers of my own and I also
help out friends fixing their machines. But I do not
do this professionally. The computers are different,
and so are the disks and the version of Windows.

When I boot from a Windows CD I can install
from that one, but IIRC there is not really any
option of partitioning the drive on installation.

Thats certainly true of the Win9x and ME versions of Win.

Not true of the NT/2K/XP family tho, they do give you more options
on that. With some limitations tho if you want to use FAT32.

Do you have any good suggestions for strategy and tools to use?

Just learn how to use fdisk properly and use
the latest version from MS for Win9x and ME.

If you cant get your brain around fdisk no matter how hard you
try, you could try Drive Image and get some extra capability to
copy partitions included which can come in handy when adding
new hard drives to systems where you dont always want to do
just clean installs, particularly with the non OS partitions.

Best not to use anything older than 2002 tho and you may
choose to ignore 2003 because it uses a net passport.

 

[Guest]

Thats overstating it considerably.

I think it is wasting my time that I have to sit there through
fdisks Checking whatever, several times. First when I choose
"Creating Partition" then after I have said No to using the
whole disk for that partition, and then again when I pick
"create extended", and when I create logical one and two.
Check, by all means, but I would rather give all commands in
one go and do something else when the process is being done.

Formating three partitions takes a while too.

With just fdisk and format ? Dont believe it.

Twice just recently. A new 60 gig Travelstar for my Thinkpad a
couple of weeks ago, and again yesterday with a new 80 gig
Deskstar for a friends computer.

Just learn how to use fdisk properly and use
the latest version from MS for Win9x and ME.

I have successfully partitioned disks with fdisk at about 100
different occasions. I know it better than most non
professionals. And I do use the one from W 98 SE.
By the way I did not think Win ME had fdisk, since the common
suggestion was to create a boot disk from W98 (?)

you could try Drive Image and get some extra capability to

I tried Partition Magic 7, which lets you fill in all your
wishes for a disk and click "Apply". But that gave me a "Wrong
media type" too on reboot. And then same Pqmagic complained
about media type. I had to remove everything with fdisk,
format, and then partition, and then format again.

Why would I have to format a disk before I partitioin it?


Lars
Stockholm

 

[Eric Gisin]

The majority of computer professionals gave up on Win 98/ME years ago.

If you want to use DOS go ahead, but don't whine about how bad it is. Don't
tell us there are bugs when you use it modern hardware either.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I think it is wasting my time that I have to sit there through
fdisks Checking whatever, several times. First when I choose
"Creating Partition" then after I have said No to using the
whole disk for that partition, and then again when I pick
"create extended", and when I create logical one and two.
Check, by all means, but I would rather give all commands in
one go and do something else when the process is being done.

Formating three partitions takes a while too.


Twice just recently. A new 60 gig Travelstar for my Thinkpad a
couple of weeks ago, and again yesterday with a new 80 gig
Deskstar for a friends computer.


I have successfully partitioned disks with fdisk at about 100
different occasions. I know it better than most non
professionals. And I do use the one from W 98 SE.
By the way I did not think Win ME had fdisk, since the common
suggestion was to create a boot disk from W98 (?)


I tried Partition Magic 7, which lets you fill in all your
wishes for a disk and click "Apply". But that gave me a "Wrong
media type" too on reboot. And then same Pqmagic complained
about media type. I had to remove everything with fdisk,
format, and then partition, and then format again.

Why would I have to format a disk before I partitioin it?

You don't. You can't.

 

[Guest]

The majority of computer professionals gave up on Win 98/ME years ago.

Me too, years ago. I personally use W2K since before it was
released, but some friends have XP. That is not the issue here.
I ask for advice on "Modern mode to set up a hard drive". I am
open to all reasonable suggestions.

If you want to use DOS go ahead, but don't whine about how bad it is. Don't
tell us there are bugs when you use it modern hardware either.
?

Lars
Stockholm

 

[Rod Speed]

I think it is wasting my time that I have to sit there
through fdisks Checking whatever, several times.

Sure, I just meant that its overstating it considerably
to call that 'very tedious and slow' with a 100GB+ drive.

Formating three partitions takes a while too.

Depends on how you do the formatting.

Twice just recently. A new 60 gig Travelstar for my
Thinkpad a couple of weeks ago, and again yesterday
with a new 80 gig Deskstar for a friends computer.

You must be doing something wrong.
Never got that with any for years.

I have successfully partitioned disks with fdisk at about
100 different occasions. I know it better than most non
professionals. And I do use the one from W 98 SE.

Thats not the latest.

By the way I did not think Win ME had fdisk,
Yep.

since the common suggestion was to create a boot disk from W98 (?)

Only from those who havent got a clue about the ME startup floppy.

I tried Partition Magic 7, which lets you fill in all
your wishes for a disk and click "Apply". But that
gave me a "Wrong media type" too on reboot.

You must be stuffing something up completely
there when you get it with both PM7 and fdisk.

Presumably you are starting with a non standard partition table.

Should happen with a drive thats been cleaned with
something like clearhdd which just writes zeros thru
the first physical sector and the first few hundred tracks.

And then same Pqmagic complained about
media type. I had to remove everything with fdisk,
format, and then partition, and then format again.

Which is more evidence for a non standard partition
table. Its less clear how you manage to produce that.

Why would I have to format a disk before I partitioin it?

You dont. I never ever do.

 

[Eric Gisin]

If you really need to partition drives from boot floppies, I would suggest
Ranish Partition Manager. It is free, and you can partition and format without
rebooting. I don't use it often, but it is easier to use than DOS tools.

 

[Frank]

Just learn how to use fdisk properly and use
the latest version from MS for Win9x and ME.

If you cant get your brain around fdisk no matter how hard you
try, you could try Drive Image and get some extra capability to
copy partitions included which can come in handy when adding
new hard drives to systems where you dont always want to do
just clean installs, particularly with the non OS partitions.

Best not to use anything older than 2002 tho and you may
choose to ignore 2003 because it uses a net passport.

DI2003 does not use a net passport, or need a net passport.
It uses the .net framework, which is a completely different animal...

 

[Rod Speed]

DI2003 does not use a net passport, or need a net passport.
Wrong.

It uses the .net framework, which is a completely different animal...

Wrong. Thats one way of describing that.