Hello

[Sandi]

Hello everyone!

I am pretty new to the forum so I guess I have to come clean and admit that I am a bit of a novice on the computer.
I couldn't begin to build my own. However, I have been popping in here every so often and find the forum very informative.

I joined the forum because I saw that there are some pretty savvy people out there who are willing to help someone find their way around.

I recently destroyed my Dell that was only three years old (to embarrassed to tell you how I did it) Needless to say I'm a bit more cautious now! I managed to save my old hard drive and have hooked it up as an external. My problem is that it is a huge HD with windows XP on it (I am now running Vista home basic). I need to know how to reformat it to be used strictly for storage and how do I partition it?

Sorry for sounding so dumb.:laughing:
I appreciate any help you may offer.

 

[Kharn]

Hi and welcome to TF.

Partition magic or the HP external media utility (at least i think its called that) will help you format the old drive.

 

[Sandi]

Hi and welcome to tech forums.

Partition magic or the HP external media utility (at least i think its called that) will help you format the old drive.

Thanks Chris.

Are they dificult to use? I mean, do I have to actually "Know" the lingo?

 

[Kharn]

No both are very easy to use GUI based (Graphical user interface) a few clicks and you will be ready to go, it's far easier than the command line (Dos screen) way of doing it.

If you run into problems post in the relivent section and we will do our best to help.

 

[Trotter]

Actually, you should be able to format it in Windows. Go into My Computer, right-click the drive, and choose format (that's how XP does it). Vista is supposed to have some built-in partitioning tools... ask in the Windows forum.

 

[nOcLuE98]

yeah I was about to say, you could use the control panel and administrative tools, but I dont know if it is the same for vista...

 

[Sandi]

Thanx for the warm welcome everybody!

Before I dare to try this, I have one more question.

The HD is 40GB Ultra ATA/100 (7200RPM) according to the invoice.
When I took it to a computer nerd to try to recover what I had lost, he told me it is an IDE. Is this a contradiction? I bought a IDE external box and it seems to be working fine. Am I talking apple and oranges here?

Anyway, back to the project at hand.
I see that Vista will format the drive, however I'm not sure how to go about partitioning it. Should I partition it into four equal parts or ....?
Any feedback you can give me is much appreciated.

 

[Trotter]

ATA = IDE = PATA = EIDE

A little confusing, but they are all the same thing.

40 gig is not a whole lot of room. I won't use less than that for Windows, and that is with installing most of my other programs on a different partition along with my files. I wouldn't go smaller than 20/20, if I even partitioned it at all.

 

[Sandi]

ATA = IDE = PATA = EIDE

A little confusing, but they are all the same thing.

40 gig is not a whole lot of room. I won't use less than that for Windows, and that is with installing most of my other programs on a different partition along with my files. I wouldn't go smaller than 20/20, if I even partitioned it at all.

Thanks!

Before I go any further, I have been told that I cannot run the XP OS (that is still installed on it) if I am using the Vista OS on my present system.

This is the main reason for re-formating in the first place. Otherwise, I would continue to use it as is and just keep things stored in pics or documents that I wouldn't want to lose in case the main OS crashes.

 

[veg1992]

Hey there welcome to TF