need help on formating drive

[Lorax]

hi ive decided to format my drive and before i do i need some help. i have 2 drives, my c, which is 6 gigs and my d which is 20 gig. i am only formatting my c. i have already gotten the drivers for my devices.

my questions revolve around the actual formatting.

if i use a zerowriter thing, do i have to use one made by my hard drive company?

after i format i just put in the windows start up disk and install windows, right?

will my not formatting my D drive effect the performance of my computer after i reinstall windows?

thanks for the help.

 

[Vrangel]

If you need low level formatting use manufacturer utility.

Then its startup disk and windows install.

You lose all data on second drive if OS has been on the first one.
No performance issues.

 

[Henry Kuo]

can't you just boot with the bootdisk, and then type

format c: /q/u/s

then reboot using your bootdisk and then install windows?

 

[ktwebb]

Unless you have serious, serious issue with your HDD, a low level format is completely unecessary. Do a regular format and be done with it.

 

[Lorax]

uh.. whats the difference between a lowlevel format and a regular one?

thanks

 

[eia430]

a regular format just wipes the directory information a low level format wipes that and the partition information also. Do a regular format and dos will still be able to read the drive and just list it as empty. A low level format will wipe it so dos will not be able to open the drive at all and all you get is a "drive cannot be found" error. Of course once you repartition it (using fdisk command in dos) dos will be able to again open the drive and show contents. hope this helps

 

[urbantechie]

If you do a regular format then it will say "Recording Bad Clusters" that means you have bad clusters and it stays there. But if you delete/create partitions then you format, it won't say that. Doing delete/create partitions then formatting is usually enough. But if the drives have bad sectors then a LLF would be a good shot or you have sensitive data. A LLF writes 0's to the drive, and when its done, the drive is just like factory new. Generally a LLF is not neccessary.

 

[BCYL]

Simply pop in a Windows startup disk, format the drive using DOS, pop in your Windows CD and setup Windows again...

No, not formatting your D drive should not affect your performance after you install Windows again... But if you did install applications onto D drive, you will not be able to run them after re-installing Windows...