Delete entire hard drive

Nefarious · Oct 5, 2003

Hello this is my first post on these forums. Anyways what I wanna do is delete everything on my C drive. I have WinXP home and I have two hard drives a 20gig(C drive) and a 40gig(F drive). Originally the computer only had the C drive and thats where the OS was, but recently I reinstalled winXP home on my F drive cause thats how i want it and I installed WinXP on the C drive again too delete everything and start fresh. So I need to know where to put the jumpers on the hard drives to set the F drive to master and C drive to slave and erase everything on the C drive.

Is there a easy to use free utility? or someone told me to make a Win98 boot disk and delete it in BIOS which im unsure of how to do that.

Also I tried to set the jumpers and when I booted up I got some error and then I put them back the way they were and it fixed it. Is this diagram for any and all hard drives or do different manufactuers have different jumper settings? The F drive is a western digital and not sure what the C drive is...i'll check it though.

I know I ask alot of questions for such a simple task but I like to be thorough and understand it all.

Thanks

Nefarious · Oct 5, 2003

O yea the diagram is here:

http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/jumpers.asp

Nefarious · Oct 5, 2003

looks like I should have posted this in the storage section now that I think about it, Anyways I just now tried to set the jumpers again:

F drive to master and C drive to slave and i get a Boot disk failure
I put them back and it works, but I just have to select which copy of WinXP to run.

so post away people

KILLorBE · Oct 5, 2003

Welcome to the forums.

I'm not aware of any free tool that can do that.

You could do it manualy, but to me it seems that you're kinda new to formatting, let alone messing with other files (like boot.ini) so I won't explain how that should be done (also, there are several/many programs that will point to the wrong drive after you made those changes, which you can only change in the registry and messing with the registry is ONLY for advanced users).

The easiest way is to reinstall XP with the drives attached the way you want them (IE: 40GB as C: and 20GB as F: ).

Make a bootdisk or download one from BootDisk.com, boot to DOS and type: format c: (that will delete/erase ALL data from the c: drive, repeat that as you wish for other drives (IE: Format d: to format the d: drive....etc)).

It's probably (most likely) possible to format your drives using the XP CD, but as I'm on dual boot I always use the WinME CD to format my drives.

repo man11 · Oct 5, 2003

Western Digital drives can be picky about their jumper settings. What is the combination that is working for you?
If you set a WD as Master, it won't boot if it doesn't detect a slave drive. If you set it to Slave, and there is no master drive, it won't boot. Often the easiest way to have a WD live with another drive is to set the WD as Cable Select. Setting it as single has worked well for me also. If the WD is set as single, and my Maxtor is set a slave, I can put my Maxtor in my system, transfer files, and pull it back out without changing the jumper settings on the WD.

The safest way for you to format the drive may be to disconnect the IDE cable from the drive you do not want to format before powering up.

Nefarious · Oct 5, 2003

I have the C drive to master and the F drive to slave

when I switch them they wont boot

Nefarious · Oct 5, 2003

I went to bootdisk.com downloaded the first one on the page: DOS - Windows 9X/Me/NT/2K/XP Excellent then scroll to the bottom under Windows XP Bootdisk Sets and downloaded the XP Home. File name: WinXP_EN_HOM_BF.exe and it made 6 disks.

I put number 1 in and restarted the comp I booted to the disk and then looked around a little but am unsure of where to go to and what exactly to type to delete the C drive.

Thanks

shiyan · Oct 5, 2003

just reinstall Win XP on the drive you want, and during installation WinXP will ask you whether you want to format it. Just format using quickforat to NTFS option.

or, if it is not the system disk you are trying to delete, just delete the partition using disk management under computer management (right click My Computer -> manage)

Nefarious · Oct 5, 2003

You cant use disk managment to delete a partition that is (system) or (boot)

ptwearnhardtfan · Oct 5, 2003

When you are switching the drives, are you also changing the cable to reflect the slave/master relationship?

Nefarious · Oct 5, 2003

ewww forgot i needed to ill check

shiyan · Oct 5, 2003

just install and format...

newindy4130 · Oct 11, 2003

sorry to jump in, but im trying to reformat my c drive to and only that drive, for some reason my a drive is not working that's something else........i have win xp pro, can i reformat and boot from the cd??????? thanks alot.......

shiyan · Oct 11, 2003

you need to boot up from the CD. after you press ENTER to begin the install, you get the licence agreement. You press F8 to agree. Then it checks your disks and shows you the partitions.

At this point, delete the exisiting partition. It will ask you whether you are sure or not. (I think the keys were "del" to delete, then "d" to confirm)

Just ask it to install on the free space, and it will create a new partition, in NTFS format. (or you can create a new partition, then install on that.) You then choose to format using Quickformat NTFS. (or regular Format, which takes a lot longer, and doesn't have any advantages that I've found)

zachj · Oct 11, 2003

If you don't delete Windows from both hard drives, then they're going to retain their drive letter settings. What you want to do is format both drives. Then change the jumpers on each drive to make the 40GB drive Master and the 20GB drive Slave. Then boot the computer using the XP CD. Partition both drives, and format the C (40GB) drive using the NTFS file system. Install windows on the new C drive and get it all working. Then right click the (probably D drive now) 20GB drive and format it using NTFS. Everything should work fine.

Z

Ebola · Oct 11, 2003

a:\>fdisk

fiji · Oct 12, 2003

make a boot disk, then type

format C:

or get partition magic

or get a linux liveCD (like gentoo/knoppix)
then type fdisk /dev/hd$

where $, is the drive you want to edit the properties
the drives start from a-z

ex: fdisk /dev/hda

shiyan · Oct 12, 2003

why all this trouble if the Windows NT/2000/XP cd can do it so easily...?

fiji · Oct 12, 2003

im pretty sure, because he doesnt want the OS installed on that drive...

shiyan · Oct 12, 2003

ahh... okay.

your method might be less hassle then.

but using the NT/2000/XP cd to delete a partition is also not much trouble.

you just go up to the delete partition stage, then you just quit the installer by pressing F3.

Delete entire hard drive

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