I have a Western Digital Caviar 40.0GB 7200 RPM Enhanced IDE Hard Drive. Windows XP Home Edition is installed on it, however we cannot access it. We tried booting from the Floppy Drive with the Hard Drive floppy disk in it, but it wont boot from that disk. The disk can't be read on our other computer so I am assuming its damaged. We hooked the 40.0GB hardrive up to a Windows 98 computer and set it as a slave to the 6GB hardrive. Is there anyway we could format this harddrive that way? Any suggestions at all on how to format it will be appreciated. Thanks.
2006-10-28 01:19:40 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
you need to format it by booting off a wondows xp disc or using partition magic its probably in ntfs file system
2006-10-28 01:26:18 · answer #1 · answered by bsmith13421 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
hooking it up as a slave will probably work not too sure about it working on windows 98 tho. It will definatly work in windows xp tho and also if the drive isnt totally broken you might be able to save some of the information on it by browsing it in windows explorer. Try the windows 98 thing 1st tho as im 80% sure it will work.
Good Luck
Rob
2006-10-28 03:46:25 · answer #2 · answered by robert j 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
He's right. There are specialist companies out there who specialise (funny that, eh?) in complete data removal, but to your average home user you can't really clear your hard drive. There is nowhere OFF the hard drive for your information to go, is there? It remains on the hard drive, albeit garbled and extremely difficult to regain.. but nonetheless possible to those with the know-how and equipment. I imagine the data is compressed and fragmented to enough of an extent for you to never notice any decrease in total storage space, although hypothetically your idea makes sense.. apart from the hard drive exploding. It could be a technical limitation I'm not knowledgeable enough about or efforts by Microsoft etc to prevent the great majority of those who format hard drives - those with something to hide. So as long as you're not into child pornography or fraud, the police shouldn't be too interested in your hard drive. Congratulate your father.
2016-05-22 02:50:37 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If I were you I will use Acronis Disk Director Suite. I recommend you to set your HD as a slave then reformat it with Disk Director in way that you want. In addition this program allows you to resize, move, copy, split, merge partitions without losing your data and recover accidentally lost or deleted partitions.
You can learn more about Disk Director here: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/
2006-10-28 01:38:07 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You need to set the BIOS to boot from disc before hard drive. Check that first; F2 after switching on.
2006-10-28 01:29:35 · answer #5 · answered by cdrotherham 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Have you tried to format it through"Safe Mode" (F8 key on restart)? If that fails, trash the drive and get a new one, this one has "CRASHED". A 40 GB 133 IDE doesn't cost much these days. If you've soured on Western Digital, try a Maxtor. Between $138- $163 USD should fix the problem.
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2006-10-28 02:04:53 · answer #6 · answered by mittalman53 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I can give you a link that deals with hard drive problems.
Some hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful
2006-10-28 23:42:12 · answer #7 · answered by blsruthi 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋