Strange Issues with HDD Format

[Jagriti]

I am having some problems while formatting a hard drive. I also tried with hard drive from different computer which was running on windows vista. I tried with another setup and it is not accepting to format drive. I also tried with older IDE HDD. I took CMOS battery out and again reseated.
but no solution.

Please provide some views regarding this problem

[Hardwareman]

Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP do not natively support drives larger than 127GB. The standard DOS FDISK provided with Windows 98 and the Windows 98 startup disc do not support hard drives larger than 32GB.

In order to do this right, you will need some other partitioning software, such as Partition Magic or the built-in partition managment in the Windows 2000 / Windows XP setup.

You will need to create a 31GB partition for 98 alone initially, then install it to that. Later you can install proper drivers for your IDE controller and HDD. I'm not sure what software allows you to see >127GB on Windows 9x.

[Maxforu]

There are several ways you could do this, it sounds to me like you are trying to do this from within windows setup and not booting from the CD, if for some reason you can't boot from the CD, you can use a boot disk, you could also use a HDD setup utility (most likely your HDD manufacturer's website has one available for free download) And follow the instructions on using it, these are pretty simple to use.

[Killen]

The best thing to do would be to boot from the Windows XP installation CD if your computer's BIOS supports booting from CD. If not, you'll want explore the CD to find the utility to create boot floppies (you'll need 3 or 4.) It sounds like you are using a DOS (or previous version of Windows boot disk) boot disk. You don't really want to format using that anyway. You'll want the installation program on the XP cd to do the formatting for you.

[T.J.]

1. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Cluster Administrator.
2. Remove any dependencies that are configured on the physical disk resource. To do this, follow these steps: Click the Resources folder that is in your cluster.
3. In the right pane, right-click the Shared Disk resource that you want, and then click Properties.
4. On the resource Properties page, click the Dependencies tab, click the resource in the Resource dependencies list, and then click Modify.
   
5. Important We recommend that you make a note of the dependency resources so that you can add them back later.
6. Click the dependency resource that is in the Dependencies list, and then click the left arrow to remove the dependency resource.
7. Repeat step c for each dependency resource.
8. Click OK two times.
9. Click the Resources folder that is in your cluster.
10. In the right pane, right-click the Shared Disk resource that you want, and then click Properties.
11. On the resource Properties page, click the Dependencies tab, click the resource in the Resource dependencies list, and then click Modify.
    
12. Important We recommend that you make a note of the dependency resources so that you can add them back later.
13. Click the dependency resource that is in the Dependencies list, and then click the left arrow to remove the dependency resource.
14. Repeat step c for each dependency resource.
15. Click OK two times.
16. Click the Resources folder that is in your cluster, right-click the Shared Disk resource that you want, click Delete, and then click Yes.
17. Format the hard disk volumes that you want.
18. Create the physical disk resource, and then add the resource dependencies that you want.