So I recently bought a used computer without a hdd from a government surplus store. I have an old 4gig hdd that had windows 98 installed on it. I tried plugging it in and it tells me that various files are missing or corrupt so I'm assuming I just need to erase it. So how would I go about doing this?
Ok, so I googled formatting a harddrive and it seems like you need an operating system to do that. So I'm guessing there's no way to do this without an OS installed. So could I just plug it into my computer that's running windows xp, and format from there? I also don't know how to format a hdd but I'll do some reading on it.
I tried plugging the hdd into my working computer but all that did was ovveride the main hdd and told me that the hdd I had plugged in was bad. Help?
go to your bios then set it up to boot off of a cd then use your os cd format it using your os cd to automatically format and install your os do not forget to delete all the partions from previous installations peace out
assuming you do have access to a computer download Darik's Boot and Nuke program from here: http://dban.sourceforge.net/ you can install this program to boot from a number of devices including USB, CD-Rom, and Floppy. Just read up on the website to get all the details. Also make sure you do not have any other hard drives connected as those will also be subject for formating. If you do get it working then this program will take a long time to format the hard drive. It will completely (and i mean COMPLETELY) wipe off you hard drive. Not even the FBI will be able to recover data afterwards. (this is also a good way to wipe off your hard drive before throwing it away.)
To me a better option is using a program like Window Shredder. It will take a long time but you can re-write over the drive using Department of Defense standard to make sure there is almost no information remaining while with reformatting you can still find some remains of information but not much.
What operating system do you wish to use? Normally one chooses the best software for one's purpose, then chooses the best operating system that runs it. There are many choices. (The best - in my opinion - are free, as is the software they run.) What drives have you on your machine? A floppy drive? A CD drive? If your hard drive is not bootable, which alternative drive spins, looking for an operating system to boot? (If none does, you can fix that by tweaking a cable here, a pin there.) Gneiss1
Tomorrow I expect to be gone, so I'll assume the worst. If you want to install a new OS, skip the erase and just install the startup CD and follow the instructions. It should scan the disk for bad blocks first. Scan this first, somehow, if it doesn't. Let it map out clusters: neighboring blocks are suspect anyway. If you want to rescussitate Windows 98 (though who would?), create a boot CD or floppy containing 'scandisk', from http://www.bootdisk.com/ and let it map clusters bad and try and recover these: it will read them a few times, then write the more common content to a cluster at the end of the disk. Now boot from the hard disk & note which files are corrupt. The site above may have these. If need be, you can browse very carefully amongst the freeware on http://www.simtel.net/labels/simtel.net/category.sub.php[id]352[SiteID]simtel.net Should you be interested in learning or bettering your programming, Linux is popular here http://www.debian.org/ good Linux (swapping) http://www.freebsd.org/ good performance (demand paging) http://www.openbsd.org/ good security (encrypted virtual memory) http://www.netbsd.org/ good portability (unique paging). Check the Wikipedia for Comparisons of Operating Systems, Free Operating Systems, Open Operating Systems, &c. Most of these, I believe, run Linux applications. Gneiss1 PS. Oh, if your disk is a 21st Century ATA, you can teach it to thoroughly confuse itself (erase partitions, data tucked away in nooks & crannies of partitions & other unexpected places) using a DOS program, though I don't know why you would want this. http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt
Did you jumper it as a slave, before you put it in your working computer? In short, a drive that small may not be worth keeping.
You can also download Ubuntu ISO burn it to a disk and boot off the CD. That will allow you to partition and format the harddrive.
