PCTech Forums

OK. I bought a new WD 80 GIG HDD and know i want to install WIN XP,
MY Question is do need to portition the HDD and reformat,
Or do i just put the Win XP CD to install.
Please help
Thanks
Foxconn Mobo
AMD XP 2200+
1 40 gig HDD
2 80 gig HDD
CD ROm
512 PC 2700.

Make sure the HDD is set to MASTER...
Winxp will Format and Partition the drive for you....

Good luck..

Cactus

Just one point.. if you're using UDMA cables.. you will want to set your drive jumpers to Cable Select (CSEL) rather than master.. and make sure you connect it to the last connector on your IDE ribbon..

With an 80 gig hard drive the xp cd will formate the hd with NTFS. If you want to use fat 32 and the drive is over 32 --40 gig (can't remember) you will not get an option to format using Win32. If you fdisk and format the drive seperatly, it will allow fat32. I've used fat 32 on a 100 gig, but this is really an undocumented and non supported issue when your drive is over 40 gig. You also have to use the newer update of the windows format command. It has a bug in it that will say its only formating 64 gig less that what it should be, disregard the error, its a bug.

On a new install, I don't recomened the cable select option unless you have a cable select ide cable. There are two type of cable select cables and they are opposite in their mode of operation. the cheepie with a hole punced in it has the c drive in the middle of the ide cable. The expenisve one with a wire crossover goes at the end of the cable.

When you do the install make sure that you only have one hard drive hooked up. It makes for a clean install. Plus, if you were to use cable select (as in Dell) and you make a mistake on which cable select cable you have, you run the real risk of formating the wrong drive!

Thanks for the answer.and your time.