new hard drive won't format

[raja]

I just bought a new hard drive. The old one was a 6GB, and the new one is a 100GB (I'm giving the old one to Tiretool for his game server). I have a Win95 universal boot disk that I'm using to reinstall my OS and all that jazz, but there's a problem. It says that to install the OS I have to format the HD, b/c it's either not formatted or it's not FAT 16/FAT 32 formatted, so when it tries to format it, it goes to DOS and then this is what I get:

Formatting 95.79M
Format complete.
Unable to write BOOT.
Format terminated.

A:\>

I've tried with write-protection both on and off on the boot disk. One odd thing I found was when I tried to make a copy of the disk on another computer, I could copy all the files on the disk into a folder on the desktop, but when I tried to copy those files onto a new disk, it wouldn't do it. Any suggestions? The hard drive is set up on the primary slot, and there is no slave on that slot. Everything is configured exactly the same way that it was with the other hard drive (as far as wires and whatnot). The jumpers are set up correctly (none are connected... that's what it's supposed to be for "Master or Single Drive"). I hope I'm not forgetting any information y'all need...

[highrisemech]

You probably have to run fdisk then format it.

Click on harddrives at the home page this will
explain fdisk and partitioning.

[Mr RodeoCC]

If the old HD is still connected then junpers are required for master on one drive and slave on the other. If the new drive is being installed as a single drive in the system you have to prepare the drive. First run "fdisk" and partition the drive as neccessary. Then format the drives using "format c:/s" then reboot the computer with the start up disk inserted preferable a Win 98 start up disk, it has the cdrom driver Win 95 doesn't. Then load with cdrom support. Good Luck

[Mr RodeoCC]

quick reminder The How To Build a Computer Guide on this site is an excellant source of info for doing this, it will help explain the process completely. Good Luck

[Hpro]

You can't go over 65,535 Clusters size in Win98 that's why - tell him to make two partitions this will do it..

[glc]

You can't even use a Windows 95 bootdisk to set that drive up - you really need to use the setup software from the drive manufacturer for one that big. I had to use IBM Disk Manager 2000 to set up a 75 gig 75GXP I sold a few months ago - even a 98SE bootdisk quit at 64 gigs. Are you sure you want a single 100gb partition with that huge cluster size? You will be wasting space and it will take days to defrag.

[raja]

I'll try partitioning it... I think I'll make it into 4 partitions of about 25GB each. I'll let y'all know how it goes!