Help with formatting

[Pillow]

Iv never formatted my computer before (wipe everything), and i was wondering, how do i do it?! Might sound stupid, but hey, everyone has to learn somehow.

[Rostum]

What OS are you using?

[Pillow]

Windows XP Professional, soz forgot to mention before :p

[Siber]

Just boot off of your CD, and then select Install (not repair because that just replaces files). Then you should come up w/ the selection for what to format. Delete the partition before formatting.

-OR-

Get a floppy, go find fdisk. Boot off the floppy (but you need to know how use fdisk. That should be on the site where you find it. But, I suggest the first option because it can be easier).

[Pillow]

hey thats a hell of alot easier then I thought
Just 1 more thing, whats the partition :dead:

[Siber]

A partition is a segment of your hard drive, that once created, cannot be made any larger or smaller w/o deleting it and starting over. It is just an allotted space w/ one of two main functions: 1.) Boot off of and store data OR 2.) Just store data. Unless you have multiple drives set up, your whole hard drive should be a single partition. If it's not, and you only have 1 drive (C:\) then you have free space ^_^ Your C drive is a partition of the harddrive for example.

[Pillow]

Sorry im still a little confused

I have 2 hard drives, a C drive and D drive which is a recovery drive, and the file system for the recovery drive is FAT32 and the normal one is NTFS, so what exactly do i do?? sorry if im a little slow here :sweat:

[dingobite]

If you have two drives they both should be of the same format not a mitch macth of Os Ntf being the better choice.


Me ive been hearing for years how people use partitians to have their Os on one side and all the extra room for their files on the other drive. This way if they ever need to reformaat or loose the data they could delete their first partitian reformat and still have their files on the second partitian without any corrupt files.

I just tried this on my new 80gig drive 12gigs for the NTFS and 66+gigs for my files/games now all i have to do is wait for a reformat and see if its true. :spin:



Just hope you dont need any bootdisk i do everytime, dl the file then copying it to 6 floppys. I dont have to wipe my whole drive everytime but most the time i do then i have to start up with the bootdisk, i think you can find them at microsoft though i google search for them.