How to hav Win98 formatting capabilty on my XP cd

[ideas]

i noticed that quite a few times i tried to format some hard drives with my win xp or win 2000 cd and am getting this message saying could not complete format or the Disk is corrupted.

but wen i use the win98 cd to format it it formats without any problems

so i would like to hav this win98 utility to be on my win xp multi-boot disc

thanks for your solutions

[jaclaz]

Well, the "correct" way of re-formatting under ANY OS is to do so AFTER having wiped the disk, expecially if some "strange" application like bootmanagers or proprietary programs that hardcode data into hidden sectors were used on the drive.

There are tens of programs able to do so, you don't need a "secure wipe" one like these:

http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml

just a program that writes all 00's or FF's to the drive, like this one:

DSFOK

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/fr...ware/index.html

part of the DSFOK tools is the program XDL (6 Kbytes):

xdl

xdl is a secure file deleter and partition or disk eraser. It overwrites

targets with random bytes. Everything on a partition or disk, including

file system and boot sectors, is destroyed.

Special features:

- erase file name (random, eg. "LTp30vBTIt049NIkt.3Tz")

- erase file time/date (random 1995 - 2005)

- nullify file size

- erase file cluster slack (xdl will report up to 64kB more erased data)

- bypass file system's caching and buffering for top performance

Usage: xdl target

Warning, target will be irreversibly erased.

Example: xdl c:\tmp\my.zip

erase "D" partition: xdl \\.\d:

erase second hard disk: xdl \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE1

erase floppy disk: xdl \\.\a:

To erase a "hidden" partition (no assigned letter), first run vlm to find its

unique volume name, then copy and paste it to xdl, eg:

xdl \\.\Volume{ac837e69-551d-11d9-9a3c-806d6172696f}

xdl deletes files after one round of overwriting of their contents, but

disks and partitions can be erased as many times as you wish. One round

of overwriting may not be enough if you use a low density disk and are

concerned with magnetic microscopy recovery.

Files can be drag-and-dropped on xdl.exe or its shortcut.

Warning again, there is no undelete or unformat option after running xdl,

no prompt nor confirmation dialog. It is possible to erase a "live" disk

or partition and make it inoperable.

It is possible that in some cases hard disk format under win2K/XP "misbehaves", just as it does floppy disk formatting:

http://www.denispetrov.com/format144/

About

I could not figure out how to format a demagnetized floppy in Windows XP. Its format functions — both GUI and command-line — just verify that the disk is readable, and if it is not, they give up and declare the diskette unusable instead of actually trying to format it. I don’t know what developers at Microsoft were thinking, but this is obviously a mistake. Or a bug. Or maybe it’s a conspiracy between diskette manufacturers and Microsoft to boost sales as people toss “not working” but still perfectly good floppies and order another box of brand new “working” ones! Just kidding.

I searched the Web for a free utility that would do what I needed, but all I could find were overpriced monsters with a myriad of useless options. It seemed as if nobody would spend an hour to create a tiny little thing that would simply format a diskette and make it useful again.

Thus frustrated, I sat down and wrote this tiny little thing myself. It honestly formats a standard 1.44 MB diskette in drive A: on any Windows PC. You can download the source code for study, improvement or including in your own projects. See compilation instructions below. I will be glad to hear your comments and answer questions, so feel free to e-mail me. This program is provided AS-IS, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY WHATSOEVER, and source code is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The program does not require installation of any kind - simply double-click on the downloaded executable file.

jaclaz

Edited February 17, 2006 by jaclaz

[Takeshi]

so i would like to hav this win98 utility to be on my win xp multi-boot disc

Add a Win98 or WinME boot floppy image to your multi-boot CD.

[hj_fr]

Use the utility from your hard disk manufacturer to do a "zero fill format" to really erase all data on the hard drive. After, use the format utility from windows.