How to Format a Windows 98 Hard Drive

Windows 98 Start Up Screen

When setting up a new hard drive on a Windows 98 or Windows 98SE computer, you must first run a program called "FDISK." This partitions the drive, establishing the area for use by the operating system and setting up the initial file structure. The next step is to format the drive, which allocates clusters of disk space for data storage and verifies whether each cluster is usable or not.

Things You'll Need

• Windows 98 Hard drive

Instructions

1. From within Windows 98, click "Start" on the taskbar, then "Run."

2. When prompted, type "FDISK" into the "Run" dialog field. Answer yes ("Y") when FDISK asks if you want to enable large-disk support.

3. 

   At the next prompt, select option "1" to create a DOS partition.

4. 

   Answer "Y" at the next prompt when FDISK asks if you want to use the entire drive as the DOS partition.This will restart your computer, and Windows will load again.

5. From within Windows 98, open "My Computer." Select the drive you wish to format by right-clicking on it with your mouse; select "Format" from the drop-down menu.

6. Enter a name for the new drive at the "Volume Label" prompt. Select "Quick Format" from the next dialog box and then click "Start."

Tips & Warnings

• Be certain that you want to format your drive before you start, and back up important files. All data on the hard drive will be lost when you run FDISK.

Resources

• Information and help from Microsoft about formatting Windows 98 drives