I wonder if your friend is caught in the old restriction on low-level
format. For a period of time about 12 years ago, many drives had warnings
not to do a LOW-LEVEL format on them. This is different from the regular
formatting done after FDISK partitioning. In any case, this is history and
it is again ok to do low level formatting IF it is needed - usually this is
not needed.

Unless I am missing some other caveat, you should safely be able to
partition and format your disk to whatever size configuration your OS
supports.

Peter - the NoSpin group
-----------------------------------------------------------
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> -----Original Message-----
> I recently bought a new 120GB hard disk drive and was
> prepared to format
> it, use fdisk to setup a new partition for dual booting, and
> set it all
> up when a friend told me I should never format large drives because it
> renders them unusable. Is this true and, if so, why?
>
> Thanks!
> Anthony

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