I have a Maxtor Fireball 3 HDD with a clean install of XP on it.i now want to use the drive as a portable HDD but after i tested it in another system it fails to boot from the drive. the PC says drive read error. is there any way i can format it to make the drive usable once more be it external or internal. XP does not allow me to format it as it has system files. However it does boot up fine in my old computer which it was in before but this is useless to me!
windows can't be on an external hd if used on different computers. if current computer is not using that maxtor then delete the partition, make a new partition & format the drive.
on the computer that you want to use the drive on do following 1. install hard drive 2. turn computer on, press the "del" key, when it's booting up, this will get you into the bios. 3. go to the boot sequence section. Choose to boot from cd first, hard drive second. (before you save/exit, put the windows installation cd in your cd drive). 4. When computer reboots , it'll start loading the pre-install files to hard drive. The first screen will show all partitions on your hard drive. Now you can reformat whatever partition you want. You can use the "quick format" function. This will remove all trace of your operating system. This is the way to do it, if you don't have any partition tools. (you can also use the hard drive installation cd) But I would recommend a pure partition utility(that works on all brand's of hard drives), that way you have more control of how you want your hard drive will be setup.
Or on an internal drive as I seem to be finding out. Note to self (and to others), installing xp on an Intel CPU, nVidia chipset board does not mean the same install works on an AMD CPU, ATI chipset board.
i have tried booting and formatting with the XP cd. The formatting works fine and I then power down my pc. however now attaching it to my existing computer setup the pc gives the error message "NTLDR is missing". I tried entering my system's bios to change the advanced bios setting of hard drive priority boot to boot from the hard disk with XP installed but it appears i cannot. Using an Intel D945GNT mobo with Intel bios. i do not wish to use the hard disk with an operating system but simply as an additional internal hard disk. would putting an external enclosure solve the problem
also more info here How to fix: NTLDR is missing, press any key to restart http://www.tinyempire.com/shortnotes/files/ntldr_missing.htm
the problem is i do not wish to use it as a sole hard disk but an additional disk for my current rig.will i still have to reinstall windows in order to do this?
no, just partition & format the hd if that hasn't been done yet. i do that all the time with my 2.5" hd or 3.5" hd hooked externally via usb.
what i actually meant was do i have to reinstall windows if i wish to use it as an additional internal disk in my current rig?
Ahh ye forgot! Out of inttest does vista actively support fat32? Or do they force you to "upgrade" Filesystems?
I haven't seen that question asked, and I don't know the answer right now, either. But the only thing more moronic than putting Vista on your computer would be putting it on and formatting your hard drive as FAT32.
NOTHING seems to work!a fresh install of windows appears the only solution. will try goin external if all else fails...
