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Date: | Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:08:40 -0800 |
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On 17 Nov 2006 at 17:41, loverboy rxxx wrote:
> .. would like.. to know.. some notes on how to format a computer
One does not format a computer. One formats some particular piece of
media, such as a disk, to prepare it to receive and hold data -- the exact
preparation done will depend on what kind of media it is:
Floppy disk -- lay down tracks and sectors, and initialize the File
Allocation Table.
CD-R -- Some burning programs use "format" as the term for whatever they do
to prepare a disk for writing, especially ones that allow you to add more
files later.
Hard disk -- A "low-level" format lays down tracks and sectors; these days,
that is usually done by the manufacturer and no longer needs to be done by
the user. More commonly, a "format" is done to create an initialized
(empty) file system (FAT32 or NTFS have different details) on a drive
partition.
If you format the partition that the OS is on, yoiur computer can no
longer boot from there. Most modern OS installation CDs include provision
for formatting a partition and installing a fresh copy of the OS to it.
Maybe that's what you want to do?
David Gillett
PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
visit our download web page at:
http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml
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