First thank you to all those who replied to my original mess #100522. I was asked why I have "cdindos.exe & win98.exe". Because the site I was originally sent to "bootdisk.com" said these are the programs I need to reinstall Win98 after I format my HD. But, my question now, that has not been addressed anywhere I have gone, is: What happens to DOS when you format C:|?? If I lose all data on HD, where does it go?

formatting erases all the data on the hdd, if data is corrupted then you delete it all, then put it all back on the way it is supposed to be it doesn't "go" anywhere, it's erased, like if you backspace when you are typing, it's just "gone" (there are actually ways to undelete it, but don't worry about that)

It's gone! You need to reload Windows with a boot floppy disc to restart dos.

when you format, the data is GONE and unrecoverable. (actually there is a way you can have a professional POSSIBLY get data back, but its very expensive and probably not worth it). you make a win98se boot disk and boot from there, with cd-rom support, then install the OS from there. the boot disk contains commands that the empty computer will understand.

"What happens to DOS when you format C:|?? If I lose all data on HD, where does it go?" ... it's on the floppy disk you are booting to.

ACTUALLY . . . the data isn't deleted at all. There just isn't any space allocated for it. When you format a drive, you never have the same amount of space as you do with a unformatted drive. THAT'S why you can reallocate the data and retrieve it. If it was "gone, deleted" . . . you wouldn't be ABLE to retrieve it . . . don't ya think? It's ok . . . I was an idiot once too. lol

How does the "unformat" command in DOS work, and how can you unformat (by using the unformat command) your hard drive once you've formatted it?