I recently got a new maxtor hard drive and want to install it as a second hard drive (slave on the primary IDE channel.) However, there is apparently an issue with formatting and partitioning it using the included max blast software if you have plans of installing windows xp on it. Should I use FDISK to format and partition? and if so, how do i go about doing that? Or is max blast ok to use or should i get some other third party partitioning and formatting tool? I already have win ME on drive C and want to eventually install win XP on the new maxtor drive so i can dual boot. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Does your CMOS/BIOS see the new HDD just fine? If so there is no need to use the drive overlay. (the max blast software) Drive overlays suck for the most part. I hate drive overlays with a great passion and only use them when I must. So if your system will see the HDD, use FDISK to partition the drive and then format it and all should be happy. The thought of even doing what you want is not a happy thought, not with a drive overlay that is. Lates, KTTD

I got a Maxtor 40 gig harddrive for christmas and installed it as the master drive. I ran the maxblast software to set up the harddrive. It sets it up and puts command.com on the drive. My biggest problem was getting cdrom support from dos so I could access the cdrom drive. I installed windows 98 then xp as I only have an upgrade copy. xp runs just fine.