F-disc a Maxtor HD without useing Max*Blast Plus 2

I have a Maxtor HD that comes with it's own software for formating the drive. It says not to Fdisc, but to use the Max*Blast software. I can't get it to work so I was wondering WHY they say not to F-disc, but to only use their software? Thanks, chris.

 

I am on my fourth Maxtor hard drive and have always preferred to FDisk and format using a Windows 98 boot floppy.

Whilst MaxBlast floppy has always been provided, the instructions have never advised against FDisk. The MaxBlast software has only been used by me on one occasion to get around a BIOS limitation of 8.4 GB when the disk was a 10 GB one.

 

Thank you. Mine right on the box says; "Maxtor recommends using MaxBlast Pus installation software rather ther FDISK..
At least I know that it will work not using Maxtor software.

I was wondering about the other way to format the drive. one way is more complete then the other. Can you tell me what each one does?
I think one way lets all the sectors be writen over and the other way completely wipes the drive. Thank you, Chris.

 

You should be able to use fdisk as long as you're sure your bios supports the drive. There's really not much dif between the two. Either way you lose all the data that's on the drive. You can however, if you want, use the maxblast software to transfer the contents of one drive to another (more or less the same thing as using an app like drive image). I've used it once for this purpose a long time ago and had no problems. If your bios supports the drive and you don't want to copy your old drive to the new one, I'd just use fdisk myself. It's up to you.

 

fdisk

I use maxtor & IBM drives on regular basis. If installing win98 I just fdisk w/win98 startup disk. If winxp is to be installed I just let the winxp cd partition & format the drive from it's setup

 

I believe that Maxtor is playing the safe route by telling you to use their software.
I like F-Disk also even though it is outdated.

They assume you have no knowledge of DOS opr anything beyond the very basic and since it is very easy to '***** up' their software is probably more fool proof since F-Disk isn't.
Many of the hardware provided software packages have side effects that f-disk doesn't since it is universally compatable with all hard drives.