formatting a second hard drive

[Taz202]

G'day
I just installed a second hard drive and I want to format it. I would like to install my win98se on it as a back up. I am trying this because my system has become somewhat unstable and I want to wipe my hard drive clean. I wanted this other drive in case I pooched something formatting the first. This might sound stupid but I've never done this before and would like some sort of insurance. I noticed in my computer when I highlight the second drive, under file I have the option to format as I would a floppy. Is it alright to do it this way or not. I'm not sure if I can even use a boot disk. The last time I tried that my computer would boot from the hard drive no matter how I set the boot sequence. Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated
Thank you

 

[Nitestick]

its possible that either your floppy drive or boot disk are faulty. if you want to run windows from that drive i suggets using the command "format X: /s" without quotes and X is the drive letter. be careful that the letter is in fact the drive letter because off a boot disk the letter may change. you could format from the windows 98 cd either by allowing the setup to do it for you or by entering command prompt from the cd. post back if you need more help

 

[Taz202]

I think maybe my mobo or floppy is dying. Still no luck trying to reboot to anything but my hard drive. I tried running the command you mentioned above, When I start everything seems fine. After I proceed with the format as I am prompted to I get an error messege
It says "checking existing disk format
recording current bad clusters
92 percent completed.
insufficient memory

 

[RicoDirenzo]

You'll never get there that way. It is installed as a slave so go to My Computer and right click on the second drive (D or whatever it is) and choose the format option. Then screw putting 98se on the slave, which you can't anyway unless you do a freah 98se install on it as a master and then reinstall it as a slave. Get Norton ghost and copy master to slave and you have two bootable versions of the same drive!!!