ok i have had this problem for a while now, and have twice attempted format
c: /x and when i had 2 drives i attempted format f: /x the /x is meant to
unmount the drive

because i just try the basic format f: command it says the drive is still
mounted and may be unlock/locked not sure exactly about that
locking/unlocking

anyway

When i try the /x add on it seems to work but i still get the message that
the drive needs to be locked or it may be locked "cant remember if it was
locked or unlocked and only have one drive now and dont want to risk format
incase it works"

anyhow this is a right pain and really slows down the process of re
installing the OS

my CD drives wont boot at all i have a sony cd-rw/dvd-rom and a sony dvd-rw
and both drives wont boot, even after changing boot sequence in the BIOS and
having jumper settings changed around.

I have posted about this in the past but have only had people stating the
obvious (disable hard drive boot/check jumpers/change boot sequence/boot
into command line/try it in safe mode)

none of the aove work, also going into disk management and right clicking
disk and format is greyed out. i have partition magic, not sure if format is
available with that tool, also my drive is just one primary partition (NTFS)

is this normal, i can only format my hard drive by booting into windows XP
setup with the CD and since my cd drives only seem to boot into the CD when
they want it has become a terrible problem for me to format a hard drive. I
know its quite funny that i am having trouble performing such a simple task
but surely there should be some way of getting around this drive still
mounted with /x added to the format command and then possibly another
argument that will lock or unlock the drive (i am 75% sure it is lock)

also is there a way to have a drive installed but not have windows recognize
it?

I want to copy one drive to another as a backup with norton ghost, then
disable the drive with the backup on so windows doesn't recognize it, and if
anything should happen i can bring it back up so windows does recognize it
and that it is the boot drive.

this is why i need to format i have a drive which isnt in my system which
has stuff on it (F drive)

need to format it so i can get the norton ghost copy accross to it then
disable it so it isnt included in the drive list, is this done by simply
disabling the drive in BIOS?

i have done this to my primary C drive and the system has still booted from
it?

anyone with any suggestions please reply

Thanks (in advance)

Christo



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MSI KT6V
AMD Athlon XP2600+