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Difference between fdisk and format?
Name: DaveM Date: February 20, 2002 at 11:11:28 Pacific
Comment:
Also will fdisk & sys c: erase data already on the hard drive?
Name: zippy Date: February 20, 2002 at 11:19:17 Pacific
Reply:
fdisk partitions the hard drive, format creates a file system on an existing partition.
fdisk will effectively erase data on a drive, unless it is creating a partition in an unused portion of the drive.
sys c: does not erase any data, it simply copies the DOS system files to c:
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Response Number 2
Name: Dan Penny Date: February 20, 2002 at 11:22:54 Pacific
Reply:
In a nutshell,, Fdisk creates partition(s) on a drive. This structures the drive.
Format prepares all the sectors on the now structured drive to receive data, based upon how many bytes per sector, etc. All data on the drive is lost with these two functions.
SYS C: copies the files neccessary for the drive to boot. It adds files, it doesn't erase other files.
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Response Number 3
Name: dmorse03 Date: February 20, 2002 at 18:57:14 Pacific
Reply:
DaveM: Don't do any of these until you really understand what you are doing. These commands can be VERY unforgiving. There is nothing mysterious about Fdisk or Format. But if you have valuable info on your hard disk, you could lose it all.
Summary: There is a patch for the Win98Se FDISK. See Microsoft article Q263044. Without this patch, FDISK will only recognize 64Gg of the drive. It will show the difference between 64Gg and the size of the ...
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