A hard disk from the manufacturer is sort of like
bare land with nothing built on it.

 When you  fdisk the drive, you determine
where the cities and subdivisions will be built.
(These are the partitions.)

Wnen you format the drive, you lay out streets and
street signs.  (The operating system uses these.)

When  you write files, you build houses.

When you delete files and trees, you
bulldoze houses, but the streets remain.

If you re-format, you lay down new streets
and the houses get torn up in the process, but
the cities remain.

If you fdisk, the cities are wiped clean along
with everything in them.

In reality, when you delete a file, the address
of the file is lost from the post office and
the house is not bulldozed quite yet.  Thus,
some utilities, such as undelete, can reset
the address if you use them before you
bulldoze the house (i.e. over-write the
storage area with a new file).

HTH

Dean Kukral

-----Original Message-----
From: Karen Coghlan <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, December 31, 1998 2:52 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] I have a question, mabe you can answer


>I have been learning how to formatt my hard drive and am curious.
>What is the difference between deleteing the del tree and
>reformatting the hard drive.
>
>Karen
>

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