How do I make a start up disk in NT or Win2000?

[Viper22]

OK all i need some help quick.....I need to know how to make a start up disk in either NT or Win2000 so can format this drive to NTFS. Any help is appreciated.

Viper22

 

[SUOrangeman]

I just wrote a quick reply to someone here at work concerning the making of a boot floppy for WinNT.

Bad news first: It ain't gonna happen *natively*.

Bootable floppies are 99+% DOS. DOS cannot natively handle NTFS.

Your best bets: Attach the drive to an existing system, partition it *OUTSIDE of WIN2K*, and format it in Win2K. OR Boot the Win2K CD and partition the drive *without installing the OS*.

If you partition it inside of Win2K (post-install), it will make a dynamic volume instead of a basic volume. Dynamic volumes are probably great when you need to add more space to a single volume. Two drives will show up as the same letter. But the moment you take one of those drives away, Win2K might croak.

-SUO

 

[Viper22]

Ok i will see what i can do. its a 30GB drive and trying to get the whole thing NTFS for NT4 is a pain in the ass.

Viper22

 

[bongod]

hmm, i do remember that with NT4 it was possible to create a boot floppy that was capable of accessing NTFS. whether it came with an NTFS version of format, i don't know.. but that'd be a place to start. if you're interested i can dig around and see If i can still find it.

 

[ThurzNite]

Fresh install? Stick in the OS cd and boot to it. Along the way setup will ask if you want to format. Choose yes and choose NTFS and finish installing.
If you already have an OS running, just format w/in the OS. Like in WinNT or Win2k, just go into the Disk Administrator (admin tools) and format from there.
Or, just format as fat32 and convert.
Lastly, if you're running ntfs and need fat32 disks, check out www.bootdisk.com This's very helpful for flashing bios and such.
Jay

 

[Viper22]

ThurzNite....It is a fresh install...You can not make a Partition when installing NT more than 4GB in size. Its a 30GB Drive and im trying to format the entire thing into 1 Partiton...also NT4 does not support Fat32 at all.

Viper22

 

[Bozo]

If you have NT4 installed, update to SP5. Then from the command prompt run 'convert c: /fs:ntfs' No quotes. Then reboot. NT will convert to NTFS. USE Partition Magic to expand to 30gb

Bozo😀

 

[StuckMojo]

i would suggest that you just format c to 4g (or possibly less) and make d take up the rest. going for 1 big partition in nt4 is kinda more hassle than its worth. plus, by keeping your system on a separate partition, you often end up with less fragmentation of your system partition.
just because you have c and d doesnt stop you from installing some programs in d:\program files\ ...
jumping through all these hoops just to have one drive letter...kinda a waste of time, dont you think?

 

[tim0thy]

especially with drives going closer too 100G very soon. funny, i still use one partition on my drives. 🙂

 

[ThurzNite]

I still like my idea. If you're gonna format the whole drive, boot to cd. When it asks to format, partition it then to whatever size you need. I'm pretty sure you can format the whole thing ntfs w/o any problems.