Member Avatar for ArNy

Hey I just found a old compaq 98 windows in my garage it runs fine and everything i just was wondering if anyone could tell me how to reformat the hard drive?

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Dani AI

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Good start: asked the right question and both and pointed to the two usual routes — use bootable system media to wipe and rebuild the drive in-place, or remove the drive and prepare it on another machine. A few practical notes and pitfalls to watch for before proceeding.

  • Back up anything you might want from the drive before you begin. Old systems can look fine and still have intermittent read errors.
  • If you work on the machine itself, make sure the BIOS boot order is set correctly and that the floppy/CD drive is powered and detected. Prepare boot media that contains the minimal DOS/Win9x utilities plus any ATA drivers the machine needs.
  • If you remove the drive, use an IDE-to-USB adapter or connect it to a spare desktop. Modern tools (Windows Disk Management, Linux gparted) make it easy to delete the old partition table, create a new MBR layout and create a filesystem compatible with late-90s Windows (FAT32 is the typical choice). Keeping the primary partition under the old BIOS LBA limit (roughly 137 GB) avoids detection issues on very large modern disks.
  • Check jumper/master-slave settings on IDE drives when you reattach them. If formatting or partitioning tools report bad sectors or I/O errors, run a drive diagnostic (manufacturers provide utilities) — failing drives should be replaced rather than reused.
  • Finally, gather the original Windows install media or Compaq/HP drivers beforehand so you can complete the reinstall and restore device drivers after the wipe.

If uncertain about hardware work or diagnostics, removing the drive and preparing it on another PC is the lower-risk option.

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Member Avatar for DavidRyan

Hook it up to a computer, boot the computer from a (bootable) floppy disc (check that it has format.com in addition to the system files). Once booted, run the following:

format n:

where n is the drive reference (it will not be c, but it will probably be d:).
Reboot into windows.

Member Avatar for AcornDomains

I would fdisk it and build a new partition, go to Microsofts site for details

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