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Is there a faster way to format? I heard somthing about using drive images?

Norton's Ghost creates an image of your HD and copies it to a CDR. So when you want to do a complete re-installation you just boot from floppy and transfer the image to your HD without all the seperate installation headaches.

If thats what you mean.

😉
 
uhmmm paulson, whats that do?
cuz when i normaily format i got format /s c: that makes it bootable, will /q make it bootable?
 
I'll answer this for Paulson (Sorry!), the switch /q stands for quick. /s should still make it bootable.

😉
 
/q will make it QUICK(it take a few seconds instead of a few min), it can be used as well as the /s tag to make it bootable also.
 
The difference is that the drive must have been previously formatted to use the /Q switch, and yes you still need the /S to make the drive bootable.
 
The real difference between /Q an no /Q:

When formatting a partition, all FORMAT is really doing is establishing an appropriate FAT to handle the file system and clusters for the drive. This process actually only takes seconds. The long wait while FORMAT counts 1%. . . 2%. . . 3%. . . is actually a read/write test of every single cluster in the partition to catch bad sectors. The test does not physically wipe any data, which is why programs like Lost and Found can rebuild your drive after a mistake. FORMAT insists on this test for a new partition that has not yet been formatted, but it allows you to skip the test for an existing partition -- that's what /Q does.

Modus
 
Okay, this is a total newbie question ... but here goes:

If I want to format C: which contains Win98se I can do format c:/q because it's already been formatted previously and it's not a new partition? I'm getting this from Modus' post ... (I feel dumb for asking but I want to make sure ...)
 
Modus, when you say that Format does not physically wipe data from your drive does it wipe out the pointers? Again, I feel dumb for askin' but just wonderin'. Thanks.
 
If by pointers you mean the FAT (File Allocation Table), which is essentially a huge list of pointers to every cluster that contains the beginning of a file, then yes, any FORMAT operation will wipe that out. However, I believe the reason a program like Lost & Found can recover your data is that the FAT specification calls for a backup copy to be written to a different sector near the beginning of the drive. Since it is not necessary to wipe this backup copy to wipe a drive, I believe FORMAT leaves it alone, allowing recovery of files.

Modus
 
More fun with errors.....

Well i got partition magic 4.0 as suggested above, and when i use the dos version, i get the error not enough memory...if its talking bout ram, i got 192...thats enough rite?

and when using PM4 through windows (boots to dos ) its starts making my partion and stuff, then at 58% it says "error 3 batch execution".....hmmm anyone have freaking problems like this

anyother programs worth a try?

im just happy those errors didnt screw my HD with like a half done partition
 
chiwawa626--

1. By not enough memory, it is referring to conventional DOS. As I recall, it needs ~590K....give or take 10. I believe some of the updates/patches to 4.0 helped to alleviate this problem. Powerquest has some suggestions on their site. Also, you might take a look at their forum.

2. If you have several PM batch operations setup, you might try only one at a time.

I haven't used any others, but I believe one or two have been mentioned in other threads. I dunno. Does Partition Commander (or System Commander) do the same thing? I haven't ever used it.
--Randy
 
Since we're on the topic of formatting...
There is a utility called "oformat" which is exactly the same as format, cept for one tiny detail(actually there may be others as well, just never found them in that case), you can format /q even if the partition has not previously been formated.

This utility is only given to OEM's by Microsoft, dont ask me why they refuse to release it to whoever might want it.

Does anyone around here have this util?
I used to have it, grabbed a disk with it at my previous work, but that disk has since been ruined(I was stupid/lazy enough to never copy it to a HD), and that util is really handy when you need to format large FAT32 partions.
 
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