From: Randal Whittle (rwhittle_at_usa.net)
Date: Tue Feb 02 1999 - 11:00:53 EST
At 06:44 AM 2/2/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Well... I decided last night that I had it with Windows NT4... the
>device support is just so terrible, I can't take it anymore. So I
>want to recover Win98 using the recovery CD. The only thing is I have
>4 other partitions I need to keep intact.
>
>Windows NT is currently residing on drive C: which has 500 mb of
>space, formatted NTFS. Is this going to be enough space to recover
>the CD in?
>
>What else should I be aware of?
I'm not sure which TP you have, but on my TP 600 I did something similar
just a few months ago:
1) Get everything off that first partition that you want to keep.
2) Format that first partition to FAT (Regular FAT--FAT16).
3) Do the regular install routine for the recovery CD, but tell it you
only want to wipe out the initial partition (C Drive), rather than the
whole hard disk.
Here's the problem: Step 2 is tough. I've been told Partition Magic may
do it, but the way it goes about things may not suffice for the recovery CD
program. Try it and see. Otherwise, you *can't* initialize the primary
partition on a HD without wiping out the whole HD--which means you'll need
to get your data in the other partitions off too.
The reason for the re-format? I was told by EZ-serve 2nd-level tech
support that the recovery CD program would not work on a FAT32 partition
(and I presume the same would be the case for your NTFS partition). Hence
the need to have it formatted for FAT16. They assured me also that
Partition Magic wouldn't work--that it would do it, but does so in a way
that programs like IBM's recovery CD program would see it as a "Non-DOS"
disk, which is just as bad. It needs to see it as a FAT16. If it does so,
then you run the recovery CD in a way that it wipes out only the first
partition. If not, then you have to have it wipe out the whole HD or not
run the recovery at all.
- Randy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Thu Jan 23 2003 - 09:54:41 EST