Metropoulos Forum

I bought an external HD to back up my metroamp info. But I don't know how to format it.

It's 80gig and I have it installed in the computer. BIOS sees it. But I'm not sure about Win 2k. The drive letters seem wrong and don't refresh upon reboots.

I also have an external DVD burner which is disconnected. But it seems like W2K still sees it as drive F.

Any suggestions? What's the normal procedure for formatting? I tried in DOS as well.

George

Usually you have to set up an active partition to format. They don't come that way. It's called fdisk in dos, but you should be able to do it through Windows if you click on the drive.

Wow! that's an insanely fast response! Thanks.

I am on Windows 2000 Pro. I right click on the drive and choose "format" but it says to install a disk into drive.

George

When I formatted my drive on my build, I used an old boot disk from Win 98' to partition. Do you have a boot disk with utilities?

Try these links George.

http://www.aiscl.co.uk/Formatting.htm
http://www.5starsupport.com/tutorial/partition.htm

Partitioning the drive in Windows XP / Windows 2000 (for systems where this is the 2nd drive in the system).

Boot into Windows XP or W2K.
Open Computer Management and select Disk Management.
Initialize the drive.
Partition the drive.
Format the drive.
Assign the drive letter.
Initiate changes.

You probably need to find the Administrative Tools (if it's not in your program menus try looking in Control Panel.) Look for Computer Management and double click it. Expand the Storage menu and look for Disk Management. Double click that and the Disk Manager window will appear on the right hand side showing you all the disks attached to your computer and allowing you the various formatting options.
That's assuming you didn't have to load drivers for the external hard drive. I think a kid at work had to install drivers on his system, although I've had his external drive hooked up to my laptop with no problem and no extra drivers.

Make sure that you have already set the jumpers on your Main drive to Master and the new drive to Slave. Your Bios should also have auto settings so you probably wont have to set that up in Bios.

Isn't an external drive a Slave by default? I didn't think you could use one as a master, you're not on an IDE or serial ATA channel. Should be a Firewire or USB.
Windows probably will assign the next available drive letter to a removable drive every time it is connected, right?

Thanks, it's formatting now. You guys are amazing!

George

You're really stretching the ol' brain you know -- I got an MCP on Win2K Pro and Server in like 2001, and it's sad how much I've forgotten. The economy went south and I never got a chance to make the career change, lucky for me since if I'd made a career change a few months before the economy hit bottom and 9/11 and all, I'd have been unemployed and bankrupt in a heartbeat.
Usually my only chance to use any of that stuff is when my wife locks up the home server because she and computers don't get along at all.

Hmmm, it acts like it formats and then says it wasn't able to complete format.

George

OK. Got it. Now I won't lose all of your phone numbers!

Thanks again for the fast and helpful tips.

George

Flames you are right. "External" escaped me. You are right about that but I would still check as I would be the one who bought one where that wasn't done during assembly.