format hd

[*swann294]

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 1:52 am

how do I format my hard drive. I have winxp os. Just would like to know. What are some reasons for formatting?

[*Wgoodrich]

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 10:42 am

Formatting a hard drive is only done when you buy a used computer or want to start all over again. Formatting a hard drive wipes out everything but the command com or opening statement. If you format the hard drive you will have to open the computer and obtain the date numbers and model etc. on that hard drive hard ware. Then you will need to have set up and saved an emergency boot disk on your hard drive or have an operating system for new computers. Then you would have to run through fixed disk program to partition your hard drive just like a totally empty computer.

DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMEONE TO GUIDE YOU OR HAVE DONE IT BEFORE AND ABSOLUTELY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

If you do this wrong you will have no computer left unless you take it to a recovery outlet. Be sure you have backed up all data you want because it will no longer be on that hard drive without an expensive recovery operation and only if you have not ran fixed disk program.

Be careful

Wg

[*dkerr]

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 9:29 pm

Readons for formatting a hard drive:

1. old one failed or upgrading to a new one

2. system over time has started to become sluggesh or crashed frequently.

3. Upgrading to new operating system and prefer a clean install.

4. you have purchased a new or used computer and want to set it up the way you like and not the way it was before or the manufacturer thinks you may want it.

BEWARE: A hard drive format is an absolute total wipe, nothing can be recovered after a format, so anything that you may want to save do before you start, and you must save off the hard drive, saving to the hard drive will do little good after it is formatted.

THIS IS NOT SOMETHING YOU WOULD WANT TO START UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING , OR AT LEAST HAVE RESEARCHED THE PROCEEDURE.

Just to highlight from things that would be needed ...

1st you should have a floppy boot disk that is BOOTABLE, the boot must also have the capabilities of bringing up your cd rom, after all you would likely be installing the operating system from a cd and if it not functioning after the fromat , you have a problem. WIndows 98 and up can create a bootable floppy (BEFORE FORMATTING OR FROM A FRIENDS DCOMPUTE) Some computers and cds may have boot capabilities directly , in such cases you may have to change BIOS settings to tell the computer to boot from cd rom which would have to changed back later.

2nd take an inventory of all the cd's that you have in regard to drivers and the operating system

drivers that are needed...
display driver (video card)
audio driver (sound card)
network card (if it has one)
modem (modem card - very inportant if you use a dial up modem to connect to internet)

Some computers may have other cards.

You MUST look in START/SETTINGS/CONTROL PANEL/SYSTEM/
Device Manager Tab

Click the + to expand the following and write down the following items exact and complete (all) written for...

1. display adaptor
2. sound
3. network
4. modem (VERY VERY INPORTANT IF YOU USE DIAL UP)
5. CD Rom or burner (if you have one)

It is advised that you obtain the modem driver in advanced of formating and have a copy of this driver on a cd or a floppy. This will ensure if you use dialup at least you can connect to the internet after the operating system is installed and you can get the other drivers from the internet is necessary.

Sometimes you get lucky and the operating system finds on its own all the required drivers as it installs. But more often than not there is always at least 1 or 2 drivers that it did not find on its own and you will have to search for them and install them on your own to get the affected cards working again.

At the very least a complete format and redo will take a half of a days work, if you use dial up it will take longer. As you have to go the windows update site and get all thefixes and updates from microsoft, which is not a big issue if you got a high speed connection to the internet, but if you use dial up (modem) it wills take several hours to download and install all the updates.

fdisk is used when you want to change the partitions on the drive, if you want to keep the same partitions, then just a format will do.
fdisk and format is fatal , there is no recovery , you are usually comitted to redoing your system after using them.

Also another issue exists if you have a computer that is a propritory system such as compaq. certain manufaturers (makes of computers) do such things as put part of their bios on the hard drive or a small partition of that hard drive, blowing those partitions can cause a major headache, their are ways to recreate it , but it can be a concern.

I usally do a complete format and redo of my computer at least twice a year but it is used a lot, and I know what I am doing.

To make a long story short, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

[*Davejgratz]

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 10:57 pm

I had a nasty error on Internet Explorer a few months ago, and this error would not let me do anything in windows without a lot of pain. I tried all the recovery tricks, reinstalling IE, etc. Nothing worked.
As a last resort, I had to reformat the hard drive.
Then I spent the next several hours reinstalling all the software, from the operating system, on up. A royal PITA!
Luckily I had all important data files backed up.

One thing, though. Reformatting your hard drive does not necessarily make all the old files un recoverable. This is also true for files that you just delete. The way it works, is that these files are marked for deletion, and look like they are gone, but they are actually still latent on the drive until a new file is saved over that same sector. The only way to be sure any files on a drive are gone is to physically destroy the disk. Or save so much gibberish on the disk that it overwrites every sector, thereby actually removing the data for good. There are software programs that can do this.

Something to keep in mind if you toss out an old drive, or get rid of an old pc. Many people reformat the hard drives of old pc's before they get rid of them, not realizing that a determined snoop could recover some or all of the data on that drive.
Dave


Dave

[*dkerr]

Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 11:55 pm

I am always in the habit of doing an unconditional format.

format c:/u
instead of just format c:

I don't beleive you can do an unformat command after an unconditional format.

Also I don't think you can reverse anything when you blow a partition and then reinstate it followed by a format.

[*trinitro]

Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2003 6:57 pm

You'd be surprised at how much information is still on the drive after a format.
Fdisk will only change the MBR... it won't affect any data on the drive (well.... almost).
Format will also usually not really destroy a lot of data. There is a way to un-format a drive. If you really need to get data back from the drive after a partition/format operation you need a recovery program. They will literally read and duplicate all of the data on the drive, and then try to recreate the data.

[*tsapn]

Posted: Mon May 12, 2003 11:24 pm

You can't format the C: drive from in windows. you can boot up into DOS with your boot disk for win98 and format from there. http://www.bootdisk.com/. or
If you want to reformat your NTFS hard drive then you're gonna have to insert the win xp in the cd rom. reboot pc and then load from cd, will prompt you to reformat hard drive and then so on w/ installation of xp.

[*SamT]

Posted: Mon May 26, 2003 12:21 pm

If you are going to format the HD, may I suggest that you fdisk it into 3 partitions...The primary DOS partition should be 2 gigs (for Win9x, bigger for the higher OS's) with a Volume Label of "System". the 2nd Logical Dos Drive in the 2nd partition should be 700MB (V.L.="Setup") and the remainder of the 2nd partition (the 1st Logical Dos Drive) is Labeled "Data."

After fdisking, you will have to format all 3 drives, use format /s on C: and E: drives ("System" and "Setup".) The next thing to do is copy the Win9x (or as approriate) folder from your install cd to the "Setup" drive. In order to setup the os on your computer, from the DOS prompt type

Code:
E:\Win9x\setup


This method is overall, faster, even including copying time, and you will NEVER AGAIN have to find the install CD as Windows will automatically find what it needs on the "Setup" drive.

As you need to install hardware drivers (like modems, sound cards, etc) copy them to the "Setup" drive and install from there.

Also copy the format.com from C:\Windows\Command folder to E:\

After the "Setup" drive is full or has everything you want on it, burn it to a CD, just in case.

In the future, if for any reason you want or have to, reformat the C: drive you can be back up and running in about 1/2 the time as installing everything from the CD's.

My System[C:] drive has no permanent data at all on it. I even moved my email store folder, Favorites folder, My Documents, and Desktop Folder to the Data drive. Of course I had to, I format the C: drive about every 3-5 months because I will install and uninstall 20-30 programs in that time, and invariably one of them will crash the system.

I hope this will help you all in the future,

SamT

[*trinitro]

Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 10:59 am

I used to be a big fan of partitioning hard drives, but then I realized it's far better to simply have 2 hard drives. The problem I always ran into is that the C partition was always made too small, and that usually involved deleting both the C and D partitions to make the C bigger. A lot of applications will still want to install a large portion of themselves on the C drive (think Office), and some programs will keep a lot of their files on the C drive. My Xp Pro partition is almost 2G alone. I'm not going to even look at the Documents and settings folder and the Program files folder. I also prefer NTFS over FAT32.