Hi. I got quite the problem. See, my current harddrive has 4 gigs on it, and in four months Final Fantasy XI comes out, and for a minimal requirement of space it needs a harddrive of 4.5 gigs. I have a 10 gig harddrive, but it doesn't have any file system on it or anything. No fat## or whatever. I was wondering if there's a way for me to get fat32 on it. My current OS on the harddrive that's in righ tnow is ME, and I have an ME startup disk, which I'm guessing I might need. I've got the Windows 98 and Windows ME install disks too... If they could help me in anyway. Help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Hey, You will have at least FAT on ur harddisk if u have Windows ME. If it is just FAT there will be a converstion tool to change it to FAT32. If u go to programs, accessories, and system utilities it will be there. If not open the defragment program and it will tell u which FAT system u have.

So you're saying that on the 10 gig harddrive I have to have at least some sort of fat on it? I figured I could put something on it from scratch. But, uh is there a way to make it a slave drive if I can't make it my main C drive?

To make it your master or slave HDD is a function of the jumper on the HDD. You generally have 3 or more choices. CS which is cable select. That means the drive is on an IDE channel all by itself. Master can be used for the same situation and also if you are going to have a slave drive on the same IDE cable with it and you want it to be primary. You set it to slave with the jumper if you don't want it to be your primary HDD, and it is sharing the same IDE channel with another drive. As for FAT and FAT32. FAT is also known as FAT16. FAT16 is for smaller drives and FAT32 is for larger drives and NTFS is for even larger drives. If it were me. I would take the 4 gig HDD out of my computer and install the 10 gig HDD making sure the jumper is set to master. I would use the ME startup diskette that you have and put it into my 3.5 Floppy drive and start up the computer. It'll ask you if you want to start up with CDROM support. Choose yes. You eventually arrive at an a:> prompt. At the a:> prompt type the word fdisk. Should look like this on the screen a:> fdisk, then press enter. You will come to a menu. Choose option 4 to view any partitions on the HDD. If you have any, hit esc. to go back to the menu and choose the option to delete the primary partition. Once you do this hit esc. again and you will be back at the menu. Choose the option to create a primary partition and make it active. Make sure it is active and hit esc. and quit the fdisk utility and you should be back at the a:> prompt. At the a:> prompt type restart. Make sure you leave the floppy disk in the 3.5 floppy drive. Once your computer restarts and you are back at the a:> prompt. Type format C: or format C: /s. The /s makes the drive bootable in case you want to insatll an O.S. to it and make it your primary drive. Once you type that command it will start formating the drive. It warn you that all information on the drive will be lost. Just choose yes, you want to format and at some point it will ask you about large disk support, do you want to enable. Choose yes. Once you do this you will have formated that drive to the same type file system as the other HDD. Now it is up to you as to how arrange the rest. If it were me, seeing as you already have files and so forth on the other drive, I would put the 4 gig back into my computer as Master and the 10 gig a slave. Then when you turn the computer back on the 4 gig will show up as drive C: and the 10 gig will show up as drive D: and your CDROM and what have will have moved up a drive letter. When installing the game it will want to default to the C: drive. But you will have to redirect it to the D: which is your 10 gig HDD. Hope this helps. Good luck.

Wow, thanks for the help, this should work. So could I just put the 10 gig in as slave without using the fdisk command and playing with it's partition, or can I just put it in as is it now with no fats on it.

Do what you want. If you have problems you can always post back later. LOL.

Eli Daves advice is very sound and the instructions are perfect, and its not difficult to do once you get into it. If I were you I would follow his advice, suggestions and directions. If you want to do it your way without doing fdisk, partitioning and format then its up to you, but you are very very very likely to have problems.