formating hard drive

[Ronald E. Foltz]

i have a Sony vaio with Windows xp home. . . the hard drive is divided into
two drives. . ."C" and "D", , ,
drive "C" having "windows", "program files", etc, etc. . drive "D" is where
i keep personal records, etc. . .can i format drive "D" without comprimizing
drive "C" ?? If so can i just do it by the drop down window when clicking on
properties for the drive??? thanks for any info

 

[DL]

yes

 

[JS]

Yes you can, just keep in mind that formatting the D drive will result in
the loss of any personal data files stored on D:
So make a backup (to a DVD) of anything on D: you would like to keep.

JS

 

[Ronald E. Foltz]

Thak you JS. . . one other question. . does formating a drive wipe the drive
"clean". .???

 

[JS]

It does wipe the drive clean but .....
If you are concerned that someone may gain access to the data files, yes
then can with special software.
In which case you should run a special disk wipe software package (see
below) after you format the drive.

Eraser: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
Also see: http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/dod-erase-free.html

Note: Use the DOD method (at least 7 passes) for 'Unused/Free' space,
in your case the entire D: partition will be unused/free space.
Make absolutely certain that you have selected the D: drive!!!

JS

 

[LVTravel]

While what others have said is generally correct (in that if the system is
set up like you got it from Sony), you can safely delete anything on drive
D, including formatting the drive. If you have changed any of the default
file locations for your data (Documents & Settings, email storage location,
or installed any of the programs to D, etc.) from the default as the
computer was shipped, there may be issues when you format the D drive and
destroy those logical connections with the operating system.

 

[Ronald E. Foltz]

Thanks. . .glad i saw your message before i did anything. . .not sure if
i've "moved" anything or not. . .what could happen if i have . . and
formated the drive??? thanks again

 

[Ronald E. Foltz]

Sorry . . .forgot to ask this. . . how do i find if i'm running 32 or 64 bit
version? (does that make any sense to you?). . you can see i'm no tech

 

[LVTravel]

The Sony Vaio that I have (2.4GHZ) came with XP Home on it. I am relatively
sure that yours has the same since this is what you said in your OP. Home
is 32 bit version of XP.

If you have moved any of the default folder locations it could cause XP to
not start or more probably the OS will recreate the folders but all the
information that had been in them would be lost. If a user installed
program happened to be installed on the D drive due to limited space on C
the program would no longer run.

IIRC the original setup on the physical 80 GB drive installed in my VAIO was
a 20 GB C partition and 60 GB D partition. I changed the size of the
partitions to allow more space on the C drive using Partition Magic to 30/50
GB respectively right after I got the machine. Good thing about this system
was that it did come with a true XP OEM installation CD.