Formatting Hard Drive

[waheed]

I have two SATA Hard drives. I wish to format my other hard drive. However, I keep getting this error message when i try to format it through My Computer (right click and format):



Does anyone know how to format the Hard disk from within windows and without having to restart the PC.

Thanks.

More info:

Hard drive 1 (With OS): 160GB Seagate SATA
Hard drive 2 (to format): 74GB WD Raptor SATA

[redwudz]

Try Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management. I use that for formating, partitioning and changing drive letters within Windows.

But if some program is accessing the disk, you should try to shut that off.

Restarting in safe mode would be the next thing to try and reformat there.

[thevoelk]

You could also boot to the XP cd and prepare to install it. Format the disk, and then quit the installation. Just be sure to use the correct drive.

If you have a Windows 98 boot disk, you could also boot to that and run FDISK and format it as FAT32, and then convert it inside of Windows.

Like redwudz said try disk management first. It doesn't sound like the disk has been initialized. If it hasn't, the Disk Initialization Wizard should open up as soon as you click on Disk Management.

[waheed]

Thanks for your help guys. Using the method suggested by Redwudz is working. My HD is being formatted as im typing this post.