Compressed HArddrive

[Gkntraining]

Im workin on a friends coomputer and he has Windows 95. HE wants Windows 98 install but problem is i believe his hd is compressed. It's an old computer and i encountered compressed hd way back in the days when ppl actually needed to do that for space. Well, i havent compressed a HD for a long time so i dont really know what prog. i would need to uncompress it. Can anyone give me a suggestions?

[Imperion1]

A low level format is the easiest way to uncompress the drive. I don't know if there is another way though.
The hard drive manufacturer's website usually has the program to do this.

[rmanet]

Originally posted by Gkntraining
Im workin on a friends coomputer and he has Windows 95. HE wants Windows 98 install but problem is i believe his hd is compressed. It's an old computer and i encountered compressed hd way back in the days when ppl actually needed to do that for space. Well, i havent compressed a HD for a long time so i dont really know what prog. i would need to uncompress it. Can anyone give me a suggestions?

if you're trying to save the data in the "compressed" drive see if there's enough room to uncompress it using drivespace (look for it under compression or system tools or something like that) - it will decompress that drive but the problem is there may not be enough room on the drive left to do that

- if not, you're best bet is to sit down with your friend and see what's on that compressed drive - if it's apps you may need to uninstall them (you can always reinstall them after the upgrade), if it's junk delete them, if it's music or doc files. etc. back 'em up and put them back when you're done?

worth a try maybe?

[Gkntraining]

Well, I did a fresh delete. Fdisk the Harddrive than formatted it and start with a fresh new partition but when i tried to instal Windows 98 it still says i cant cuz the HD is compressed.

[Imperion1]

See my previous post.

[ukulele]

A compressed drive has two partitions. When you used fdisk did you delete both partitions? Go back to fdisk and use option 4 to view partition information. If two partitions still exist then you need to remove them both. Next create one partition using the full drive space and reformat with /s option.

[Gkntraining]

Ohh thanks i did delete both partition. What does the flag /s do? ima do that though i created 1 partion using the full space than formatted but i didnt format it usin the S flag. Ima do that and hope it workz.

[ukulele]

Format /s adds the system files necessary to make it a boot drive. Use a win98 startup disk to boot. Switch to ramdisk which is usually E: if a cdrom is present and detected. Just type format c: /s and press enter. Then put the win98 disk in the cdrom and at the d: prompt type setup.exe. If you did everything right it should proceed with the setup.

[Gkntraining]

thanks it worked now dis guy finally gots windows 98 and now he gots just a lil bit less too worry about when it comes to freezes and kernal error messages. But you can never avoid those when it comes to windows i guess.