hard drive question

[mrbabs22]

i have a wd 40g hd that has 3 partitions and i would like to format my drive c and reinstall windows xp.by doing this will this affect my program files and other data on my other two partition?

You were told in your other thread that this topic is not General Hardware. Post your question in another category.

AnandTech Moderator

 

[YetiIronfst]

Formatting one partition will not directly affect the other two - it won't delete the files and data there. But it is quite likely to affect some of the installed applications. Apps you have installed on the other partitions may have DLLs saved in the windows directories on your C: drive, they may have settings stored in your registry, they may have data saved in your my documents or profile subdirectories on your C: drive, etc...

So make SURE that you know where you have copies (yes, it should be plural - such as one of the other partitions and on removeable media) of any important data, and be prepared to have to reinstall at least some of your applications.