Formating multipul drives for windows 10 64bit.

[Bill Shannon]

In a few weeks I will have a copy of windows 10 professional to install on my new computer. It will contain 5-6 harddrives and with no operating system which are the ways to format the drives can this be done with a NT floppy disk using fdisk haven't used a nt one before but I have one, or will the win 10 instillation DVD format the drives, or do I setup my primary drive and then install a partition software to partition the other drives and format them. or even install winXP and partition magic then format all the drives. How should I do it and what file system is windows 10 is it ntfs or some other format. I have fdisks, winxp, partition magic7, can get partition magic 8 or I was reading about another partition software program I want a good stable base for the win 10 instilation. I intend on purchasing a DVD windows 10 professional as I see no point not having a DVD for ron. Your opinons will be appreciated. Bill

 

[Trouble]

Windows (as in the installation media) has a native utility called DiskPart, considerably more robust than Fdisk.
You can access it from the command prompt at the first screen of the install by holding the Shift Key and striking F10 on your keyboard. That will launch the command prompt and from there you simply type
diskpart
and hit enter
You may want to do some advanced preparation and reading or you can simply use something like the free version of
http://www.minitool.com/partition-manager/partition-wizard-bootable.html
Which provides a bit more friendly interface for your partitioning and formatting needs. It's bootable so you can prep the drive in advance so you can target specifically at the time of the actual windows install.

 

[Bill Shannon]

Do I just copy this iso file on to a disk or do i have to install it then make a bootable CD to work with? I'm currently using winxp. I have a puter without a permenant hdd so I might practise on it its what I used for fdisking about 12 years ago

 

[Trouble]

You need to use the ISO file to create bootable installation media. The latest ISO can be obtained here
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
Choose Windows 10, the first item in the first drop down (not single language at the bottom)
Next choose your language and your bit version (32 or 64 bit to match your system architecture or in the case of an upgrade, to match your currently installed version of Windows).
That will provide an ISO that will upgrade, repair (or clean install) either or both Windows 10 Pro and Home.
Once you have downloaded the ISO you can use ImgBurn to burn it to a DVD http://imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
OR
Rufus to burn it to a USB ThumbDrive http://rufus.akeo.ie/
That will allow you to boot the machine without having an operating system installed on any drive.

NOTE: The "free" upgrade will need to be just that..... an upgrade from a previous qualifying version of Windows (7 SP1 or 8 /w update) or at minimum a valid product key from one
IF you have retail or OEM media then that is not a requirement

 

[Tim Locke]

I don't understand the question I think. Is there data to keep on these drives? How are they formatted now? You say this is a new machine with several disk drives. If it is all new then;-

W10 full edition not the upgrade should install from cold on the first hard drive ( SATA 0) and format that drive NTFS with the recovery partition and a fresh C: . If the other drives have no data to be kept that Disk Manager should be able to delete, reformat and assign drive letters after W10 is installed.


If these other drives have had Windows on them or been formatted for Windows before I would plug them in one at a time...you don't want two C drives at the same time...or as you suggest, use a partition manager to clear them first.

If you want to set these drives up as a raid array then I think you'll need software or you have a Raid capable motherboard...if the latter... follow the instructions.

I remember the 'old days' with Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 having to fiddle with aftermarket partition managers but that over 20 years ago.