First time builder with a question

[dastreb]

Sorry about the newbie question, but here goes...

I am just getting started on building a new system and was reading the excellent "Build your own PC" by David Risley on this site. My question concerns "Step 24: Prepare the Harddrives". Mr Risley descibes in detail the use of the FDISK command and the system disc in which he describes the need to partition and format the drive.

Is it really necessary to prepare the harddrive as described here or can the partitioning and formatting be taken care of when installing the new operating sysytem - Windows XP Pro in this case.

If I have to do the FDISK, etc. would I find that command on the OS CD?

Any reccomendations on C: disc size?

The new system will consist of:
Athlon 1900XP
Soyo SY-K7V
512 Corsair DDR
80MB IBM IDE
Radeon 8500DV
Pioneer DVR-A03

I wasn't planning on installing a floppy or CD drive unless absolutely necessary. These are already present on lots of other networked computers.

Thanks for all your help.
d streb

[HAL9000]

Yes, the OS installation can take care of the hard drive preparation for you. Windows XP will walk you right through it.

[Ikon]

I am in a similar situation. I have XP Home Upgrade, and a (back to Win 95 CD for the full version) I have a "CD Setup Boot disk" that came with Win95. Should Iboot with that and let XP setup partition the drives, or should I go to bootdisk.com and just get an XP boot disk and format with it's format utility? I can't format with the Win95 disk because it doesn't support NTFS right (which is what I want)

[Alfie]

Ikon,
I'm not sure if 95 qualifies as a qualifying disk.
I think with XP,you need 98,ME or 2000.
If you can borrow a 98 disk from a friend,it should work.
You would then format the disk using XP upgrade,that will give you ntfs.Just boot with the XP cd,you would change in bios first boot drive to cdrom.

[RayH]

Previousl versions of Windows upgrade disks were essentially full versions that would check to see if you had a previous version of Windows disk. Those checks didn't require any product key. So people would find a qualifying disk somewhere (like borrow a friend's or at a flea market) and use the upgrade version.

But I believe that with Windows XP, the qualifying OS actually has to be installed on the computer! I think that Windows XP will reformat over it once it sees that the OS is installed.

[Alfie]

Not so.I formatted disk and ran XP upgrade as a full install,asked for verfication,put in Win98se disk and it verified and installed.

[RayH]

I stand corrected.

[Nuclear Krusader]

I wasn't planning on installing a floppy or CD drive unless absolutely necessary. These are already present on lots of other networked computers.

Unless you are on a very tight budget you should buy a floppy and a CD drive, they are always handy. And you MUST have a CD drive in order to install the OS... or anything!