Formating an NTFS bootable partition

[cdevers at pobox.com (Chris Devers)]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Al. wrote:

> For now, I just want to get rid of the second WinXP installation
> completely.

So why aren't you just letting the Linux installer do this? That's like
one of the main things that any good modern installer will set up for you. 

> So based on your insights, I am planning to edit C:\boot.ini to:
>
>        [boot loader]
>     -> timeout=0
>        default=multi(0) disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
>        [operating systems]
>        multi(0) disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="WinXP Pro C" /fastdetect
> 
> [WHAT DOES "/fastdetect" DO HERE? IS IT ONLY A COMMENT?]

I don't know, I just pasted the contents of C:\boot.ini from a random
Windows2000 machine. I say don't worry about it, just leave it alone. The
block below "[operating systems]" may also be different for you, depending
on your setup, but again, ignore it & just leave whatever is there alone.
The only line worth changing is denoted with a '->' above. 

> Then I want to Format partition D. I used to run
>
> 	format D:
>
> in older versions of Windows.
>
> Can I run that command from "cmd" in Win XP or there is a better way
> of formatting partition D?

That or you can do it from Windows Explorer, same difference.

But like I say, this isn't the right place to do this: the formatting
functionality built in to Windows is only capable of creating Windows
formatted volumes, but Linux can't [or at least, shouldn't] use that. 

The right place to do your formatting is from the Linux installer. One of
the first steps with any Linux installation will be to select a partition
and format it in a way that is useful to Linux. 

If you reformat with Windows, you're just going to have to do it over
again later. Don't bother. 


On the other hand, the boot loader change does make sense. It too will be
overridden by the Linux installation, but once Linux hands off booting to
Windows when you want to dual boot that way, Windows will still scan that
file again, so you might as well get rid of the 30 second delay.


Make sense?



-- 
Chris Devers