partitions and vista

[axiomflash]

I have two inter-related problems with my PC right now...am trying to reformat it.

My harddrives died a few weeks back so I bought some new SATA ones. My XP startup disk didn't recognize these drives for some reason, so I used my vista SP1. It worked fine and formatted the drives to NTFS.

Issue 1) How can I get my XP startup disk to recognize the drives?

But, now I'd like to partition the first drive and install XP on it, but I can't partition the drive either. For some reason (I suppose vista has changed the way drives are formatted?), Partition Magic doesn't reocgnize my drives as NTFS. It says they are bad disks.

Issue 2) Any idea what I can use to partition my harddrives now?


Hopefully someone here has experience with this. thanks for your help!!!

 

[KSoD]

Okay XP wont recognize SATA by default. Not unless you use the 3rd party installer and get the SATA drivers from you motherboard manufactorers website.

That will be the only way you will get XP to isntall unless you can get your hand on a version that does recognize SATA HDD's. It took me almost 3 months before i got myself a copy.

2nd problem. Boot into the Vista (Not sure where you got SP1 from since there is no Vista SP out there at all) install drive. Delete all partitions. Then use Partition Magic to create them. That will be the only way you can do it. Either that or from the XP install. but since that aint working for you the only other choice is from PM.

 

[Law]

Yep, if you use PM8 to make the partition than use Vista to do it after, PM8 won't recognize it, same thing happen to me. Like said above, you'll have to delete that partition with PM8 and create it in PM8 than reinstall LOL. I can't think of anything else.

 

[axiomflash]

cool, thanks for the info.

what i meant of course was Vista RC1. i hadf tried the 3rd party drivers before but with no success, but i just realized what i was doing wrong. thanks for helping me re-think this!