New box + reformatting hdb1

[David P. Schwartz]

You don't need to do this from a startup disk.  Just boot to DOS (Start | restart | boot to DOS) then cd to c:\windows\command (if it's not in your path) and run fdisk.  View the partitions (option 4, if I recall).  Assuming there are two partitions, you want to delete the second one.
It's likely that there is the Primary partition and an Extended partition that contains one or possibly more Secondary partitions.  You need to first delete the Secondary partition if it exists, then delete the Extended partition.  Then you'd just run the regular partitioning tool and
grab the rest of the disk space.

Alternatively, delete the Secondary partition and then create a new one in the Extended area that's FAT16 format. (This might not work!  It won't hurt anything, but you might not be able to access the "nested" partition thataway.  You might need to leave the Primary partition and then
set up an Auxilliary partition (or whatever it's called) -- they're designed for such situations.

I'm not sure I'd want a FAT16 partition larger than a few gigs, though, because your sector sizes will be humongous.  If you don't need to access it directly through Windows or DOS, then try an alternative format.

After you run fdisk and before you can format anything, you're supposed to reboot.  I'm not sure why, but that's what it says.

-David

dennisk@sahuaro.f2s.com wrote:

> Partition Magic will work of course, but it might be easier to create a Win98 startup disk (Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs | Startup Disk) and use fdisk to remove the partition and let Red Hat format repartition the drive. I think you can run fdisk from the command line as well.
>
> Read the fdsk instructions carefully and be sure you are on the correct drive or you could wipe out your Windows partition.
>
> Dennis Kibbe
>
> Quoting Kevin Brown <kevin_brown@qwest.net>:
>
> > Don't know if this is a solution, but if you have a program like
> > Partition Magic
> > around you can destroy the partitions on hdb so that there are no Fat32
> > partitions on it and then try to install.  Hopefully that Asus MBs BIOS
> > can
> > identify a drive larger than 8GB (this used to be a problem).
> >
> > If the hard drives were already formatted when you got them, then they
> > were not
> > new/unopened.  I've seen Fry's sell "new" drives that already had
> > partitions and
> > files on them.  No new hard drive should have any partitions or
> > formatting.
>
> <snip>
>
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