Hard drive partitions

[jojoidaho]

I have an older hard drive that I am installing in a I machine motherboard. My problem is that when I start the computer it takes about 10 minutes for the Win screen to disappear. It seems to take forever to see my desktop. Then for some reason someone at one time partitioned the hard drive into c,d & e. The hard drive is only a 2 gig, how can I make this just 1 letter and speed up the win98 screen? Help!!

 

[cavp]

The only way I know to do that you mention is to use a software called Partition Magic; but before using it, make sure the other drives are empty. About the drive being slow, could be perhaps due to bad sectors; run a complete scandisk before doing the drive joining.

 

[jojoidaho]

I have tested the hard drive and there are no bad sectors. Once the computer is going all the programs are running good. I was wondering if the hard drive was partitined because of the old motherboard? If this is so, can I format the hard drive now and start fresh? Will it then make it all one drive letter?
I really appreciate the help, this one has me boggled.

 

[Paul Nagel]

The following will remove the partitions and "ALL DATA/Programs" on the drive. If you want anything on the drive, copy it or back it up someway first. The program to reset the HD is FDISK. The best way to do this is with a boot disk from a Win98 computer. You boot up with the bootdisk in the floppy drive. Make sure you have access to the CD and that it reads before proceeding. The Win98 bootdisk creates a temporary artificial drive so if the CD was E:\ , now it will be F:\. If everything checks out, when you get to the A:\ prompt, type Fdisk. The first thing asked is if you want large disk support-type YES. When you get the next screen, pick #3 and hit enter. On the next page, pick #3 (Delet Logical Drive in Extended Dos Partition) again and hit enter. When done, use ESC key to go back to the previous page. This time pick #2 (Delete Extended Dos Partition) and hit enter and again ESC back to the previous page. Next pick #1 (Delete Primary Dos Partition) and hit enter and ESC a couple of times to get back to the A:\ prompt. Reboot the computer with the bootdisk and again go back to FDISK and say YES again and at the main page, pick #1 and #1 again to Create a Primary Dos Partition. Just follow the instructions and pick 100% to make the entire drive 1 partition.
You will then need to ESC back out, reboot, and this time from the A:\ prompt type Format Dif that is the drive letter of the old drive). You must be absolutly positive about the drive letter as a slip up at this point can cause total loss of everything on you main hard drive if you are not careful. When you are done formating the drive, you should be able to see it from My Computer and in Windows Explorer. It is now ready to use. If you run into problem or have further question, post back.

 

[alfixthisthing]

Hi Paul,
Great work on the process to partition and format the HDD. (That's alot of typing)
All the information to do that work is in your post. Well done.
To JoJo: Follow the instruction that Paul gave you and you got your answer. Good Luck.