Possibly stupid question about formatting...

[gamble11]

The time has come for me to wipe out my current installation of Win98SE tonight and start over with a fresh installation. I currently have my 30Gb hard drive partitioned into to two drives, C: and D:.
Windows is installed on c: along with a few programs such as email and icq. All of my other software titles (games mostly) are installed from the d: drive along with mp3's and other important documents.
I understand that by formating I will have to reinstall all software and drivers regardless of which drive.

So my question, if I use the format c: command, the only part of the drive that will be formatted will be c: and it will not affect or erase any of the data on d:, right? So if I download the most current drivers for my hardware someplace on d:, I should be able to access those files after reinstalling Windows, and install them from there. I know this sounds like a dumb question, and I feel pretty confident that the d: partition will not have any data loss, but I have read so many online guides over the last couple of days that always stress that everything on your "hard drive" will be lost by using format c: and I just want to double check. I realize that the fdisk command would in fact erase everything along with the partitions themselves, but both guides I have read stressed the word "hard drive" instead of just saying the "c: partition", so I am a little nervous.

Secondly, what is the exact sequence in doing this? I built this computer from scratch a few months ago, but the hard drive was brand new and I did not have to do any formatting of old data. I guess you just boot to a DOS prompt, go to c:\ and type format c:, is this correct?

Any responses greatly appreciated,

Gamble

 

[*kjm]

Yes Yes and Yes.

Just format c and your d drive will be safe.

 

[ScottyB_]

Yes format C: will just format C: I have formated hunderds of time in the last couple of years, alot for a teenager who just this week got partition magic, and haven't had a problem.

 

[Rankor]

Don't forget the /s to add system files after format.

format c: /s

 

[gamble11]

Ok, back up and running now, thanks for the help everyone!

Gamble

 

[Kevinjm]

Yes Yes Yes

Not dumb question at all.. I asked myself same question when I reformated my first partitioned computer.. wow that was back in the 80's. insane.


-KeVin-

 

[GRIFFIN1]

make sure you copy the c:\windows\favorites directory over to second partion (d. You don't want to love all your bookmarks.

copy everything from the win98 directory from your win98 CD to d:. This way you can install from the hard drive, and when when windows ask you for the CD later, you can just tell it to go to the d drive.


Make a boot disk with format.com and smartdrv.exe on it. You will find them in the c:\windows\command\ and c:\windows\ directory respectivly.

Boot from the boot disk and type a:\format c: /q The /q does a quick format. Saves a lot of time. /s copies the system files to the hard drive, but you don't really need to do this since windows will do it for you when you install it.

Run a:\smartdrv.exe twice to start up the HD caching. I forgot to do this once on a p200 and it was going to take about 80 minuts to install. After restarting the install and stating up smart drive, it took less than 40 minutes.

That should pretty much be it. Install all your drivers from the d drive.