fdisk and format

[sr71000]

Ok..so fdisk and format....i understand that completely..but i'm trying to explain it to my friend....I understand in my head..but it makes no sence coming outa my mouth..so before i confuse her anymore...here i am. Lol. if anyone can explain what fdisk and format are in words a normal person can comprehend I'd appreciate it. I googled it but all i found was explanations of how to do it..but nothing really of what it is exactly. thanks for any help

[kenboyles72]

fdisk - An MS-DOS
utility program which prepares a hard disk so that it can be
used as a boot disk and file systems can be created on it.
OS/2, NT, Windows 95, Linux, and other Unix versions
all have this command or something similar.

format - To divide (a disk) into marked sectors so that it may store data

[sr71000]

lol..thanks

/edit...if anyone wants to add to that..please do..i'm gonna try and piece everything together and give her a real good deffinition...it's her first day in the tech room and i can't even explain fdisk....lol...im a sucky teacher...lmao

[John Prophet]

ok....a hard drive from the factory is just "bare".....there is nothing on it..no info no nothing

to put info on it you need 2 things....you need a "partition".....a partition is just a "section" marked off on the hard drive.....usually of course there is just one big partition taking up the whole drive....but sometimes people put more than one....say it is 80g drive they might do a 10g and then a 70g partition...for whatever reason etc

ok, after u have the partition you have to then "format" it....

the partition is just a section marked of more or less....the "format" gives it an actual file system so you can install windows or linux or whatever

so when u format you are making the partition either fat32 or ntfs or some linux type of file system. Fat32 and NTFS are usually associated with windows...fat32 is older..NTFS is with Windows2000 and XP etc.


so basically FDISK handles the partitioning part..and format then does the formatting.


of course now with windows XP the XP cd makes "fdisk and format" sort of hidden becase it does it for you...it just asks you if you want to use the whole drive for the install blah blah....so there is no real tech knowledge involved.

----

for added info...when you hear of "dual booting" that means they have more than one OS that they can boot to...usually that is accomplished by having two or more partitions (section) on the hard drive...say one partition for XP and one fr linux etc


JP

[John Prophet]

also when people say 'you need to just format and reinstall'....they basically mean to "wipe it clean"...sort of like erasing an old cassette tape

say you have an comp a few years old and it has a lot of nagging errors etc....so u decide to reinstall windows....usually you backup your data then just "format" it again to wipe it clean and start over.

There is no need to "FDISK" it again really because the partition is still there from before..so just re-format it to start from a clean slate.