A highly tedious and very expensive adventure

.. das Computerwelt ist..
I’m currently sitting here watching Maxtor PowerMax doing a low-level formatting of my harddrive, so that it hopefully will install WinXP without acting like a prom date. After I have installed it, I will remove the drive from its current position.
Why, you ask?
Well, the current position (IDE2) is ATA33 which has a slow transfer rate. Since I want to use this machine server-wise, I’d like it to at least have a fast HDD. Not to mention all the extra ram I’ve suddenly got.

This is a problem I have struggled with for five (5) years. Not continuously, but still. Thanks to Littlewhitedog.com’s article called ATA/66 and Windows 2000 – a friendship? I finally discovered why I hadn’t got it to work earlier. It wasn’t just me. But the path is long and perilous. I might not return. My money sure won’t.

The expensive part is compensating for the noisy fans of my chassis. I figured that the easiest way to do this, with the current setup, would be to create some distance. This got me into a tangled mess in terms of computer cables, but tonight I etched down The Plan™ which will make me a happy man for at least a couple of hours. And a very broke man, too. More to come.

Edit 22:57
"Congratulations! Your drive has been re-written with zeros."
Gee, thanks! That just about makes my day!

3 thoughts on “A highly tedious and very expensive adventure

  1. A low-level formatting overwrites the entire disk with zeros. It usually help fix the “Error loading operating system” that is more common than it should be.
    From wikipedia:
    low-level formatting, is the division of hard disk platters into tracks, sectors, and cylinders.

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