The Hard Disk - Defragging And Formatting

Partitioning divides a large hard disk in to smaller virtual-not physical-hard disk or partitions, leading to an efficient utilization of space & boosting your PC's performance. Partitioning could be useful in following circumstances:

1-One PC, several users-If several persons must work on the same PC, partitions could be assigned for each of them so that each person has his or her own "working space." This might be useful in home setting, where you could have separate partitions for your partner, kid's games, business applications & knowledge & so on.

2-Work on multiple operating systems-You might require to work on over operating process on your PC, for example Win98, Linux & Windows95. (Perhaps you have applications that work perfectly in Win95 but suddenly crashed in Win98). You can keep these various operating systems safely on the same hard disk by installing them in separate partitions.

Partitioning Tools There're several partitioning tools obtainable for your hard drive. Of the most popular ones are:

1-PartitionMagic Version 4.0 for Windows95 & 98-Partition Magic, from Power Quest is a useful & powerful partitioning program. It effortlessly creates, moves, converts & resizes partitions on your hard disk without the necessity of reformatting the disk of erasing valuable knowledge.

2-FDISK- is a freely obtainable partitioning utility that runs in the DOS surroundings. Its greatest UPS is that it is obtainable free. It is cumbersome to make use of & also requires formatting of the hard disk (perhaps its largest drawback).

Formatting a hard disk

As with most mechanical devices, extended use of the hard disk leads to inevitable wear & tear & malfunction. Repeated adding & deleting of files takes its toll on the hard disk & you may get disk error, including the infamous "fatal error" of Windows. This is a sign that you may require to re-format your hard disk to have it working properly again.

However, before deciding to re-format the disk it may be worthwhile to try out other alternative-

1-Run Disk Defragmenter

2-Use a cleanup shareware programs such asregclean.exe, obtainable for download.

However, if after trying out these options, you continue to get deadly error message, then you most likely require formatting your hard disk.

The procedure of formatting is simple but has to be done carefully. When you format the hard disk, all the knowledge on the disk is lost-Windows operating process, program programs, business applications knowledge, games, e-mails messages. In short everything.