Hi
I have a few questions aobut reformatting your hardrive (Erasing all info (partitions) and re installing your OS and everything.)

1. Does Reformating your hardrrive hurt your pc/hardrive?
2. Is it ok to do it more than once?
3. Is the best way to do it is by inserting your OS CD and just delte your partition and re do it all?


Thanks
Lee

Hi,
1) No.
2) Yes.
3) Probably not. It depends which OS your talking about and really isnt something you should jump into without having someone near by that knows what they are doing.

There should be plenty of walkthroughs on formatting and reinstalling your OS if you do a search on google.

Hi

1.I did reformat my hardrive before but I feel I have virus on it and Reformatting my hardrive will get rid of it right??

2.WHat I did last time was insert my windows XP CD and delted the partitin and re installed the OS... Is that the best way

3. So it wont hurt it to do it agian?

I usually go to dos and do it with fdisk. I believe thats the cleanest way to do it. It doesn't hurt your computer in any way, I do it all the time :D

Yes you can do that with XP i believe. It has a basic partition manager built in to the installer i think. If not then its good old fdisk as IsHosting suggests.
Just to be sure you should create some XP boot disks before wiping.

oh and most importantly backing up your data that you need :D

:rofl: dont forget that !

Originally posted by lokodezine
Hi
I have a few questions aobut reformatting your hardrive (Erasing all info (partitions) and re installing your OS and everything.)

1. Does Reformating your hardrrive hurt your pc/hardrive?
2. Is it ok to do it more than once?
3. Is the best way to do it is by inserting your OS CD and just delte your partition and re do it all?


Thanks
Lee

There are two types of formating.. Low and high level...

A low level format is done usually at the factory and should only be done once in the drives life. If you are an experinced technican and don't mind loosing the drive.. You can attempt that..

High level formating is whats done with the DOS utility format. It is safe to do to your system. Even more than once.

is this safe too (high level liek the dos)

Is this safe and as good inseting the windows xp cd --> deleting the partiton ---> then reinstallin the OS

No.

I had to do it a lot of times with my windows XP, because it kept having problems but I had to install windows XP :(

I don't LIKE windows XP.
Partly because I had to do it a lot of times because it kept having problems.


:D



I'm just kidding...
You can format like that, without problems.


Or you can install Linux, and then you won't need to format because you won't get viruses and it will actually WORK. ;)

Prohacker, what's the difference between the two types of formatting that you mentioned?

Originally posted by sanjiv
Prohacker, what's the difference between the two types of formatting that you mentioned?

This is from PCGuide.com.
Low-Level Formatting

Low-level formatting is the process of outlining the positions of the tracks and sectors on the hard disk, and writing the control structures that define where the tracks and sectors are. This is often called a "true" formatting operation, because it really creates the physical format that defines where the data is stored on the disk. The first time that a low-level format ("LLF") is performed on a hard disk, the disk's platters start out empty. That's the last time the platters will be empty for the life of the drive. If an LLF is done on a disk with data on it already, the data is permanently erased (save heroic data recovery measures which are sometimes possible).

If you've explored other areas of this material describing hard disks, you have learned that modern hard disks are much more precisely designed and built, and much more complicated than older disks. Older disks had the same number of sectors per track, and did not use dedicated controllers. It was necessary for the external controller to do the low-level format, and quite easy to describe the geometry of the drive to the controller so it could do the LLF. Newer disks use many complex internal structures, including zoned bit recording to put more sectors on the outer tracks than the inner ones, and embedded servo data to control the head actuator. They also transparently map out bad sectors. Due to this complexity, all modern hard disks are low-level formatted at the factory for the life of the drive. There's no way for the PC to do an LLF on a modern IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk, and there's no reason to try to do so.



High-Level Formatting

After low-level formatting is complete, we have a disk with tracks and sectors--but nothing written on them. High-level formatting is the process of writing the file system structures on the disk that let the disk be used for storing programs and data. If you are using DOS, for example, the DOS FORMAT command performs this work, writing such structures as the master boot record and file allocation tables to the disk. High-level formatting is done after the hard disk has been partitioned, even if only one partition is to be used. See here for a full description of DOS structures, also used for Windows 3.x and Windows 9x systems.

The distinction between high-level formatting and low-level formatting is important. It is not necessary to low-level format a disk to erase it: a high-level format will suffice for most purposes; by wiping out the control structures and writing new ones, the old information is lost and the disk appears as new. (Much of the old data is still on the disk, but the access paths to it have been wiped out.) Under some circumstances a high-level format won't fix problems with the hard disk and a zero-fill utility may be necessary.

Different operating systems use different high-level format programs, because they use different file systems. However, the low-level format, which is the real place where tracks and sectors are recorded, is the same.

There's no way for the PC to do an LLF on a modern IDE/ATA or SCSI hard disk, and there's no reason to try to do so

correct, and even in some disk utility programs such as MaxBlast and WDDIAG, there is a feature that is labled "Low Level Format" or "Factory Recertify" from a few years ago. It truely did not do a LLF and messed up more drives than it fixed.

As stated above in a previous post, best way would be to FDISK the drive, remove the partitions, then recreate them, then format.

There are in DOS shell, a few ways to format a drive:

C:/> format c: (traditional)

or

C:/> format c: /q (quick format but can not be used fresh after fdisk)

or

C:/> format c: /u (unconditional format used to format more thoroughly)

Ok I am bout to do it but I want to amke sure this will be ok

Inserting my windows XP CD - and delteing the partion then recreating a new one...

1. Will that be ok?
2. Will that erase the virus (if indeed I have one)?
3. Is this a good way of doing of it (dont understand the DOS part - this is the way I did it before?)

Thanks agian

that method should be fine for you.

Will my method of isnerting windows xp cd and then delting the partition then creating a new partition and reinstall Xp -- will that get rid of any and all viruses if on my pc??

please reply to my last question above

I said in previous post that would be fine.

A couple of things:
There ARE virii out there smart enough to get into Bios (though usually not without a little help). If this is what you've got (unlikely, but it's possible) then you're not going to get anywhere with a format.

Formatting your drive isn't bad at all, to do so all you need to do (with windows) is insert the OS disk (if you're going to be reinstalling), delete the partitions you want deleted, recreate them, then format them (slow is advised, but fast works too).

[QUOTE]Originally posted by NewtSys
[B]There are in DOS shell, a few ways to format a drive:

C:/> format c: (traditional)



I did this to a IDE drive and now it says invalid disk when i insert windows disk. Can you give me any help with this?

Don't forget that if you have two physical drives the virus very likely could have infected files on the second drive, and to be the safest you should reformat that drive too. Just a thought.

Originally posted by csmith867
[QUOTE]Originally posted by NewtSys
[B]There are in DOS shell, a few ways to format a drive:

C:/> format c: (traditional)



I did this to a IDE drive and now it says invalid disk when i insert windows disk. Can you give me any help with this?

boot from the cd.

Actually if you go into command prompt and type in "format c:"
it wont work.
You have to use a bootdisk to get into DOS.
Windows wont let you format a partition that is currently being used [You are in Windows when opening command prompt, so it wont work.]

Just do the whole thing from CD where you select delete partition.
It should work then.

i am trying to boot with a windows 98 disk, or a ME disk and all i get is "invalid disk" with either. i also tried to use the startup disk from another computer and it says the same thing. swapped out the cd rom thinking it may be bad and does not help either.

ilyash it did take me many hours to figure out what to type ( not just c:\\format as i was told) but after i typed it computer did ask me if i wanted to format and did tell me that all data would be erased. i clicked yes and it said that the disk was formatted after a while

make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the CD-ROM / FLOPPY before the hard disk if you want to boot from a cd or floppy :)

Thanks but when i try that it says "boot from cd rom: failure" where can i find out what the cmos settings should be set to??

Can someone please tell me how to create a boot disk in Win XP? Also, how can I access DOS in Win XP to reformat my hardrive? I find it real tricky to want to re-format my hardive with Win XP on it and I can't seem to figure it out. I didn't think it would be this difficult. Any info. will help. Thanks.:eek:

Booting from a 98 or ME cd is not possible, you need a boot floppy specifically for that operating system. If you have a pc that can go on the internet, try bootdisk.com you will find the necessary file that will create the bootdisk for your particular OS.
Download the file run it with a floppy drive and boot with the floppy in your pc. After it boots you will usually get an a:\ prompt usually then type d:\ (look for one letter higher then when it say x:\ ram drive. that will be your cdrom drive. type in the letter of the cdrom drive e:\ hit enter
then type setup and the cdrom will start the os installation

I checked out the bootdisk.com and it seems promising. I will try it. Thanks for the tip and the process, I will definitly try it. Thanks.

Originally posted by csmith867
Thanks but when i try that it says "boot from cd rom: failure" where can i find out what the cmos settings should be set to??

There shouldn't be anything you need to change besides that.....i have never gotten that error before, do some searching on google ;)

Originally posted by FlightLizard
Booting from a 98 or ME cd is not possible, you need a boot floppy specifically for that operating system. If you have a pc that can go on the internet, try bootdisk.com you will find the necessary file that will create the bootdisk for your particular OS.
Download the file run it with a floppy drive and boot with the floppy in your pc. After it boots you will usually get an a:\ prompt usually then type d:\ (look for one letter higher then when it say x:\ ram drive. that will be your cdrom drive. type in the letter of the cdrom drive e:\ hit enter
then type setup and the cdrom will start the os installation

I don't know who told you this but I have booted with the cdrom and a 98 cd several times.

In fact I've found the floppy drive completely useless and didn't bother putting one in this computer.

Originally posted by pixel_fenix
I don't know who told you this but I have booted with the cdrom and a 98 cd several times.

In fact I've found the floppy drive completely useless and didn't bother putting one in this computer.

must of been a Bootable 98 disk made by a 3rd party, the normal 98 and ME disks are definetely not booteable....also, not having a floppy drive is a very bad idea ;)