Another transmission attempt! Part 2
Re reformatting.. Within the Windows environment Theory: You take a drive and split the space on it up into partitions .. 4 major ones - Primary and possibly bootable, 1 of the Primary ones can be the Active bootable partition ( that has the booting OS starter processes, or a bootmanager) You can also create an 'extended' partition which can be further split into additional (Not-Primary) partitions The MBR on the drive will contain code to set the boot process running from the Active partition That boot process in the active partition will load any specified hardware drivers and the boot manager, or OS starter The OS starter can then load the selected OS from whichever directory, on whichever partition you select (have a look at boot.ini, and google for information on it's use and structure) So - if you have a working OS such as 2K, or XP you can use the Manage Storage facility to create/delete format and set options for the partitions If you want to alter the sizes and move partitions, you will need a partition manager If you do not have a booting OS instance on the PC, you will need an OS installation CD that OS install CD will include a 'version of FDISK' to allow you to delete and/or create partitions and specify where to install the version of the OS to be installed. So - you don't (normally) reformat a drive as that writes sector headers on all the tracks on all surfaces, you partition a drive and (re)format partitions to put FAT, or NTFS control and space allocation tables ( for file creation) onto the partitions. So on a drive you can, if you have the space, create another primary partition, and install an OS into it You can also install an OS onto an extended partition, but you will need something in a primary partition to allow you to specify the OS instance to be started You can also install an OS into a separate directory os an existing partition ( e.g. The recovery Console) It just depends on the space you have available and - if you only have 1 drive, why not get a second drive - it's probably cheaper than Partition Magic from Symantec Then again you can get free to use software downloads easily enough! JimB ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pete Holsberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> : Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 12:07 AM Subject: Re: Reformatting HD Earlier message text hacked off ------------------- To Change your email Address for this list, send the following message: CHANGE WIN-HOME your_old_address your_new_address to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note carefully that both old and new addresses are required. -- ---------------------------------------- To Change your email Address for this list, send the following message: CHANGE WIN-HOME your_old_address your_new_address to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note carefully that both old and new addresses are required.
