How To Format A Hard Drive
by: Brian Maroevich
Step 3...
In fact there is nothing so difficult in it. You first need to decide what operating system you intend to load after formating a hard drive.
It is best and easiest to use a boot disk for that Operating System, such as MS Dos6.2 or Windows95b or Windows98SE. You will need the proper Windows95/98 boot disk in order to load these operating systems on the computer, else it will reject loading due to the wrong Operating System on the computer.
Step 4...
Then you will have to insert your boot disk in the floppy drive and start the computer.
Once the system has completed booting and an A: prompt appears. You will need to type format C: /s and then press Enter. The function of this command is to tell the system to format your "C" drive and when it is finished to copy the system files to the drive.
The "/s" switches for "System". You can format a different drive this way by using a different drive letter.
Step 5...
After that you will see on the screen the following text: "WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST! Proceed with Format (Y/N)?" and if you really want to continue, type [Y] and then press Enter.
Your screen should display the size of your drive and a countdown in percentage of formatting completed. Depending on your computer's speed and the size of the drive it can take from a few minutes to over 15 minutes.
When it reaches 100% complete, you will see a new message: FORMAT COMPLETE. SYSTEM TRANSFERRED. This message is to indicate that the files required to boot your computer from the hard drive have been copied from the floppy to the hard drive.
The computer can now boot from the hard drive without a boot disk in the floppy drive.