Well, I asked for questions regarding what you needed this fine friend of mine was quick to oblige so lets start with her question.
I have a question for you. My friend is trying to format his computer and reinstall windows again, but when he's trying to do that it tells him that he has to change the partition of the disk. Do you know what it means and how to fix it? Because I have no clue... thanks and talk to you soon.
M
There are couple things we should cover here. First, but from the sound of the e-mail it might be too late; your friend should have made sure to back everything up. There are numerous ways to do this and I will cover that topic at some future time. For those of wishing to learn more on backing up a drive I would suggest you try this article which is good " starting point " article.
Also you can try Toejumper's Site which is very comprehensive. The relevant section of this article is part two here. A nice thing about this article is it covers many of the reasons people wish to reformat to start with ie., performance aspects of PCing.
There is also the The Beginners Guide to Backing up XP and this one covers backing up to an external hard drive .
For you linux users who might like to do it with old hard drives read here .
Once you have gotten everything off the drive that you will want to put back onto it you can begin the process of reformatting. As far as the partition goes, if your friend wants to reformat the whole drive the partitions must be removed. At this point, let's pause and discuss partitions for a few paragraphs.
A partition is nothing more than a division on a hard drive. It more or less splits the drive up into several drives. This can serve several purposes. One being for the user who desires more than one operating system (OS), in this case, the OS will only recognize the partitions supported by that OS.
Another is simply to better organize things. I divided the drive on the machine into three partitions. I use one for Windows, another for any other programs I have, and the third is labeled "file cabinet" . It is just that, where I store EVERYTHING. This practice makes backing up much easier for me.
Another reason, and a very good one, is to maximize space. A hard drive with most the common operating systems available today can only support so many sectors. Although I will not go into detail here, a larger drive can actually waste space. By breaking it into partitions, you can maximize storage.
One final note on partitions, I was actually naive enough to think I would gain speed by partitions. That is not the case. A partition actually makes things work slower. However the fractions of seconds lost are often, in my opinion, well worth it.
Now back to getting rid of a partition. The easiest way is likely to use FDISK. FDISK is a DOS (Disk Operating System) windows program. You can find it in your DOS directory or on your windows "start-up" disk. Although you can still screw up using this utility it is basically menu driven and prompts you with questions asking you if you are sure you want to proceed. One important thing for those of you with multiple drives!!! Make sure you are working on the drive you want to. If you delete a partition, odds are your data is gone. Basically this is a situation where you must be certain.
I would also highly recommend ONLY using FDISK from the "startup" disk as you can mess things up if you do it from inside windows via the DOS prompt. Simply stick your startup disk into your drive, reboot and at the prompt type "FDISK".
Naturally you might be feeling a little squeamish about proceeding from here but fear not there is much on the internet to guide you through.
Start with reading using FDISK , it covers just about every detail regarding this matter. I would go there and read it. You will find it is not that difficult.
If, for some reason, you do not have a copy of FDISK you can always get the FreeDOS version. So it is usually just that simple?
Unfortunately, it is not always that easy. Sometime FDISK doesn't recognize the partition. This can be the case if it is a non-Windows partition. There are now several other options my favorite is a free program of course. Ranish Partition Manager is a great resource and I immediately turn to it if FDISK doesn't work. Ranish can handle more partitions and Operating Systems than FDISK. Their site is very informative and the software fairly simple to use.
There is also the option of using the old NT based program DELPART. DELPART is a small executable which will remove every partition on your hard drive. You might need to follow some special steps for Non-DOS partitions but it, again, is not that difficult but not as nice as the other options we have already discussed.
I myself have never used DELPART but I know several geeks who swear it works well. One other thing regarding this small program, store it to a floppy and not a hard drive. Otherwise it is very likely that your anti-virus software will delete it.
And as a last resort there is Kill Disk which will completely wipe out your hard drive. This software is available in a free and pro version. The free version I have will only do your primary drive and only do one pass. This software basically wipes the whole drive clean by filling it with zeros so it is to be used only as a last resort. This is also one which should be stored on a floppy for it would be a major bummer if you accidentally double clicked it.
So by now one of the four should have gotten your friend a nice partition free drive to reformat. Now it should be as simple as using the FORMAT.EXE . Again be sure you know which drive you want to do this to.
Well M, I hope this helped. The links above should get your friend to where he needs to be.
Best Regards and Happy PCing,
Lumpy the Cyber Junkie
