Ok maybe this is a software question I don't know. I have had pretty bad luck with harddrives mostly because I tend to do things with them and THEM find out if that was right or wrong. I had a Dell pc, sick of it so I'm going to build my own. I have two good harddrives in my Dell and would like to use them in my new one.
What I want to do is completely wipe out both drives, data and partitions, and just start from scratch. I messed up the windows installation somehow and when the computer started to boot it would give me the option of WinXP or WinXP. I don't know if this is bad but I don't like it. I have had lots of people tell me that I just need to do a format c:, problem is whenever I would start-up with a boot disk it would never accept the format command. I have also read in a book that that you aren't suppose to format new harddrives anymore and that's why they come factory formated.
Why couldn't I use the format, could it be my start-up disc? DO I need a 9x disc. I tried a XP and a ME (my computer came with ME). Should I not use these harddrives (at least the boot one) in a new computer? Is it just something that will make things real complicated for a first time build?
What I want to do is completely wipe out both drives, data and partitions, and just start from scratch. I messed up the windows installation somehow and when the computer started to boot it would give me the option of WinXP or WinXP. I don't know if this is bad but I don't like it. I have had lots of people tell me that I just need to do a format c:, problem is whenever I would start-up with a boot disk it would never accept the format command. I have also read in a book that that you aren't suppose to format new harddrives anymore and that's why they come factory formated.
Why couldn't I use the format, could it be my start-up disc? DO I need a 9x disc. I tried a XP and a ME (my computer came with ME). Should I not use these harddrives (at least the boot one) in a new computer? Is it just something that will make things real complicated for a first time build?