help partiioning and re-formating?

[Sigma]

My hard drive is already partitioned with a fat32 file system into one c drive. I want to format the drive and do a clean install of my operating system. Do i have to erase the partitions and logical drives, then re-partition and then format. or do i format the drive, then re-partition? do i use fdisk for this or is there a better way to do this? I've never done this before and am not sure of the steps.

 

[Arrow]

The simplest way to do this is just use FDISK. I think that you should partition the drives the way you want, then format the drives. Then install Windows from there.

Rob
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[Magneto]

Sigma,

If your drive is already partitioned, and all you want to do is reformat and reinstall Windows, you should be able to run the format c: command from DOS (from a boot disk) and then proceed with the reinstall. If you want to change any of the partition info, or add a partition, then you can do Fdisk, or use another 3rd party utility like Partition Magic or Partition Commander, etc.. There are supposed to be a few FREE partitioners floating around out there too.
I hope this helps..
Phil

 

[Guest]

You can use fdisk to check the partitions you have, and to create or delete partitions, If you have any hdd over about 10G, then I would recommend partitioning your hdd into 2, a c and a d drive, you would have 2 partitions of approx 5g each, having 2 partitions means that your seek time is reduced, windows would then make your cd-rom E:, If you wish to keep your hdd as it is then just boot the sys up with a boot disk and when you reach the A: prompt type format c: then hit enter, this will format your c drive and you will lose all data on the drive, make sure it is a Win 98 boot disk, this will then format in FAT 32, if you use a Win 95 disk it may format in FAT 16 which you dont really want

 

[Guest]

You first need to partition the drive as necessary. (Re)partitioning a drive invalidates any formatting information and any data stored on that format, unless your paritioning tool takes pains to preserve the data and resize an existing partition.

High-end tools such as Partition Magic can preserve your existing data into a smaller C: drive, and create a new primary (bootable) or extended (data) partition in the remaining space. However, since you just want to reinstall, FDISK should work fine. Follow this by a format of the new partitions. (The partitioning is quick, but the formatting is slow.)

Installing Windows should be straightforward after that.

--dv



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