What does fdisk do? 1

[mams1117]

I saw a note from someone on a thread telling another user to run fdisk. I need to get my hard drive cleaned up as well, and this was his suggestion to the user. Thank you!

 

[edfair]

Fdisk has multiple uses. Creates and deletes partitions. Creates logical drives. Recreates the master boot record.
It is used as first step in preparing a hard drive for use.
I don't advise use of it unless you understand the ramifications. Like losing everything and never being able to get the computer to run again without paying a technician.
Cleaning up a drive is accomplished by deleting junk and running defrag and scandisk. Possibly uninstalling and reinstalling programs. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[hotfusion]

Unless you know exactly what you're doing, leave fdisk and format well alone. The best you can do is probably immediately after boot, delete anything in the Windows/Temp folder older than the current date, go to control panel/internet options and click the middle 'delete files' button to remove the temp. internet files cache, delete via add/remove any software you honestly have no real use for - be brutal! Then as suggested, run a thorough scandisk, finally a defrag, preferably from safe mode. My suggestions are what I would try myself. If incorrect, I welcome corrections to my rather limited knowledge. Andy.

 

[manad]

if you havent used fdisk befoe then i would sugest you research it first. fdisk partitions your hdd. if you dont do this you can screw up the disk.

 

[paparazi]

If you are happy with the way you use your drive ie: the usual setup is to have your drive as C, using all the space on it as one drive.then there is NO NEED to think about using fdisk.
fdisk enables you to split your drive up into lots of segments, having multiple letters that represent the differant sections of the drive.
Reformatting will leave your segments (partitions) intact so again if you really do want to wipe your drive clean (and loose all information on it) and start fresh and are happy with the single partition (ie just C drive ) you don't need to fdisk.
Personally I reformat and clean install at least twice a year, but you have to be absolutely sure you have saved everything to CD etc that you want to keep.
Clean installing isn't for everyone though, you maybe content with just tidying your drive and defraging. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[elum]

How to format my harddrive and install win 98

 

[edfair]

With a boot disk that makes cd available , boot, fdisk to create partition, reboot, move to cd, run setup. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.