setting up the new system...

[weezer_bacardi2]

hey every one,

i just put together my first system. everything is running fine except for the fast, new HDD. it is detected by the motherboard yet im not sure how to set it up.

the last HDD i set up came with a disk and that went smoothly. this one, a western digital 80gb 7200 hard drive, was oem so it came by itself. i checked the website for setup software but they offer nothing like that. im assuming that there has to be some way to get it set up since it is detected by the mobo. right?

so for now i have to use an older, slower HDD. is there something that i missed?

 

[Ned_Flanders]

you need to format it.

Get a windows start up disk, and boot into msdos. From there type:

Fdisk

This opens up a disk formatting tool.
Format your harddrive!!!

If windows detects it, you can format it from in there

My dick is so big, that my dick has a dick. And my dicks' dick is bigger than yours.

 

[weezer_bacardi2]

there is no operating system yet. this drive is the primary master and i already tried to use a windows startup disk. i knew that i had to format it first but im not sure how to get into dos. im guessing that dos does not exist yet, since the HDD is blank. am i right? i really dont have an idea. but im also guessing that data has to be written to the hard drive at some point, or else whats the point of having it?

i chose to boot from floppy, the screen writes out a bunch of information about my system setup, then it says something about "allocating" some trio of letters then "..."
it hangs there for a few minutes, i hear the floppy being read, then nothing happens.

so, how do i format a HDD when there is no opperating system?

 

[Crashman]

which startup disk are you using?

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[randy66]

windows XP CD disc will format / partition