So, being a REAL beginner in this matter, if you have two partitions and are working in, say, C and that crashes, the other partition is not affected. Is that correct? Might be a silly question but I ask it anyway

[pyritechips]

Hi Penny!

Let me clarify: Partitions don't crash, unless the HDD is itself damaged. What crashes is the OS, or apps. So, if your Windows gets so messed up that you want to reformat, only the Partition it is on (C is affected. That's why when you type: format C: in DOS C, and only C, is affected. Think of partitions on your HDD as giant folders. You can put your OS and aps in C: folder and all your files in D:. If C: goes POOF! it doesn't affect D:

Hope this makes things a bit less muddy!

~Jim

Hello Jim,

Hope you are well. Yes, thank you, that is much clearer. That's a good way to think of the partions as "folders".

Bye,
Penny.

[Tushman]

Well i suppose that's one way of looking at it but I personally think it's too simplified.

Your partitions are more than mere folders. Your primary partition contains, for instance, the file system (FAT/NTFS) which tells your OS how to save your data on to your HDD; the MFT "manages" all your data stored on all your partitions even if you have more than one; and the critical boot sector that contains the information for your OS to start up. So saying they're just folders is a bit misleading. Now Jim is right about partitions not crashing on their own. Unless there is something wrong w/ the HDD itself, you will not see a partition just up and quit very often.

Jim i do have to agree though that having multiple partitions on most modern PCs w/ large HDDs is a very good thing to have exactly for the reason you outlined above. Now on my PC, i have 1 primary partition, and 1 extended and 6 logical partitions (each of them have a different purpose). Now Jim's analogy of 'folders' would be more applicable here as the 6 logical partitions are 'contained' in the extended partition.

On your Q on why your OS partition is more fragged than the others is because your OS partition is what get's used more often than the others - everytime you boot up your PC, invoke a save function or even start up a windows application, there's going to be some fragging.

Penny, you will not be afraid of using fdisk once you learn how to do it. It's pretty straightforward. Like i said above, don't use it unless you have to start from sratch. Contact me if you are interested in learning it and I can send you a easy to understand document with screen shots. Very easy. BTW, i saw your question about NTFS in another thread i can't recall. If i'm not mistaken you're running Win98 right? If so, NTFS is only supported by NT based operating systems, so it really wouldn't apply to you.

[mysecret]

Tushman, i am writing to ask for that document about fdisk. At the windows98 forum i spoke to bandit and PVC9 who both had different ways to format a harddrive. Bandit wrote out the complete steps to fdisk but im not sure if i can follow it, it looks complicated . I am using win 98SE and plan to reinstall win 98SE after a complete format of c drive.
So any document making it easier would be appreciated. I have a few programs that are not complety deleted, i did remove some of those files manually but enough is left and i dont dare touch some of them. As well i use this computer 10 to 12 hrs a day and I have not done a clean install in 9 months.

Thank you for your time, and have a great day

[pyritechips]

Hello mysecret:

This page is where I learned about partitioning and reformatting. I printed this out and followed the steps and all went smooth!

http://www.hexff.com/win98_install.html

Hope it is useful for you too.

~Jim

[mysecret]

Thank you Pyritchips, I will check out the site. I have the drivers for video and the modem. Are there others I will need? thanks for your time.

Thanks Tushman. I'm not intending to do anything about partioning yet, but should I decide to do so, I would be most grateful for your info. In fact, it would be good to have the inforamtion so that I can read-up about it for my interest, if that isn't a bother.

Penny

[pyritechips]

Penny and mysecret: for those of you that are asking about partitioning and reformatting, I have started a new thread here in Tips & Tricks. It's called...Nah! That's too easy! Find it yourself!

~Jim

Chuckle, chuckle

Thanks Jim, that's

Penny