[lyradzner]

What is the best process to reformat my hard disk? it is SATA.. i will use winXP

[Jack Hackett]

Is this drive the system drive or another?
Are you wanting to do a clean install of XP on this drive?

Please give more information on what your overall goal is and what your hardware set up is and we will be in a better position to advise you

[Dondee]

There really is no "best" process. Use almost any HDD utility software which will format and partion a HDD for NTFS. Depending on the size of the HDD you may want to create more than one partition--it makes it easier to recover and organize if there are multiple partitions. Read the instructions on whatever sofware title you decide to use. There is also a lot of information available on the Internet--do a search for Hard Disk Formating or variations there of.

[lyradzner]

yup..that is the system drive.. it is 80gb and i want to partition it into 40-40.. I know how to do that..and yes, I want a clean installation of xp..and could you please advise a better anti virus software

[bbearren]

You can format a clean install using the XP CD, but you'll need the SATA drivers on a floppy disk, or slipstream them into the CD.

[Dondee]

I don't know what Anti-Virus program you are using but I like ESET Nod32, used in combination with ZoneAlarm firewall. ESET is excellent with it's throughness, speed and flexibility.

Incidently, the lack of SATA drivers will most likely appear when you try to use a boot disk to reformat your HDD with third-party software if you have a SATA DVD/CD drive. An IDE CD/DVD drive, in my experience, should have no problems with booting partition software or WinXP installation when using an SATA HDD. I believe that I once used Paragon Partition Manager software--in Windows-- to reformat and partition the HDD (Of course it had to reboot into DOS to do the formating etc.), then just a plain (no added drivers) WinXP SP2 CD to install Windows XP Pro on an all SATA computer. So there are workarounds if you don't have the SATA drivers readily available.

[bbearren]

Originally Posted by Dondee

So there are workarounds if you don't have the SATA drivers readily available.

There are workarounds ONLY if your motherboard hardware is capable of running a SATA drive in IDE (PATA) mode. Not all are. Those that aren't won't even see a drive in the XP installation routine without the floppy-added SATA drivers.

[lyradzner]

Gotcha.. I've finished installing a clean copy of XP Pro, I used Eset as my guard and I don't know if I'm going to use a firewall.. Is that important?

[bbearren]

Originally Posted by lyradzner

Gotcha.. I've finished installing a clean copy of XP Pro

If your Device Manager doesn't show any SCSI and RAID contollers, then you're running in PATA mode, not SATA.

Originally Posted by lyradzner

I used Eset as my guard and I don't know if I'm going to use a firewall.. Is that important?

Only if you want to keep malware off your system.