Why Do Hard Drives Have to Be Formatted?

[Folkert Rienstra]

LOL..
Take a Deep Breath IN......
Release....

It'll help

Nope, didn't change a thing.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I didn't imply criticism of yours at all.

But you've called me stupid

You should learn to read ...

and now weird. That kind of hurts, you know?

.... and get a grip on that low self-esteem.

You're so fortunate that you know so much.

Your explanation helped me differentiate the
concepts of "drive," "volume," and "partition."

Then I must have failed.

I don't think I'm the only novice computer technology student/hobbyist
who may have trouble distinguishing between these largely conceptual
traits of hard drives.

I never ridicule people who can't distinguish a predicate nominative
from a participle. I just want to learn something, okay?


How was that answer wrong? Would you mind telling me?

(And if you mind, hey, don't bother, dude.)

Request 'not to bother' granted, 'dude'.

Well, even though you think I'm weird,

Again, you should learn to read.

I'm going to post

an old warning

Pre Win95 OSR2, yes.

that came with a 233 Gateway, and if anyone can tell me the
answer to Why a 2.2 GB hard drive has (had?) to be partitioned, TIA:

Didn't I tell you that all HD must be partitioned?
The question is not 'why' but 'how(many)'.

"Large Capacity Hard Drive Partitioning"

"Your system has been shipped with a 2.2GB or larger capacity hard
drive installed. Due to certain limitations with current operating system
software (both MS-DOS and Windows 95), this hard drive must be
partitioned into two sections. This partitioning allows you to access
the maximum capacity of the drive in two sections. The first partition
is indicated by the C:\ prompt on your system, and the second partition
is indicated by the D:\ prompt.

How much more of an answer do you need?

If you have a sytem that uses the Windows NT operating system, it was
set at the factory so that it uses the FAT file system for your hard
drive. You can change the FAT to the NTFS by following instructions
given in the [manual]. USING THE NTFS ALLOWS WINDOWS NT
TO ACCESS ALL HARD DRIVE SPACE AS ONE PARTITION.

The current limitations of certain operating systems to recognize a
2.2GB or larger capacity hard drive in its entirety is an industry-
wide phenomenon, and it is not unique to Gateway 2000 systems."

What is (was) so special about 2.2GB?

"Due to certain limitations with current operating system software (both
MS-DOS and Windows 95 pre OSR-2), hard drives must be partitioned
into sections" because FAT16 is practically limited to ~2GB.

 

[Rod Speed]

LOL..
Take a Deep Breath IN......
Release....

It'll help

It'd help much more if he didnt bother to release.

 

[Herbert West]

"Mute Fan" wrote

Some people would now ask what 'at the logical level' is supposed to mean.
So then, what was wrong with my explanation?

I didn't imply criticism of yours at all. But you've called me stupid
and now weird. That kind of hurts, you know? You're so fortunate
that you know so much. Your explanation helped me differentiate the
concepts of "drive," "volume," and "partition." I don't think I'm the
only novice computer technology student/hobbyist who may have trouble
distinguishing between these largely conceptual traits of hard drives.

I never ridicule people who can't distinguish a predicate nominative
from a participle. I just want to learn something, okay?

Pity that the other responses were probably right as this one sure wasn't.

How was that answer wrong? Would you mind telling me? (And if you
mind, hey, don't bother, dude.)

Weird. And that's not limited to that sentence alone.

Well, even though you think I'm weird, I'm going to post an old
warning that came with a 233 Gateway, and if anyone can tell me the
answer to Why a 2.2 GB hard drive has (had?) to be partitioned, TIA:

"Large Capacity Hard Drive Partitioning"

"Your system has been shipped with a 2.2GB or larger capacity hard
drive installed. Due to certain limitations with current operating
system software (both MS-DOS and Windows 95), this hard drive must be
partitioned into two sections. This partitioning allows you to access
the maximum capacity of the drive in two sections. The first
partition is indicated by the C:\ prompt on your system, and the
second partition is indicated by the D:\ prompt.

If you have a sytem that uses the Windows NT operating system, it was
set at the factory so that it uses the FAT file system for your hard
drive. YOu can change the FAT to the NTFS by following instructions
given in the [manual]. USING THE NTFS ALLOWS WINDOWS NT TO ACCESS ALL
HARD DRIVE SPACE AS ONE PARTITION.

The current limitaitons of certain operating systems to recognize a
2.2GB or larger capacity hard drive in its entirety is an
industry-wide phenomenon, and it is not unique to Gateway 2000
systems."

What is (was) so special about 2.2GB?

Nothing, really. It's just a logical limit of the number of sectors
that the FAT file system can address. It's a limit of the numbering
system in the FAT16 and FAT32 file systems used in Windows 95/98.
Windows NTFS can address higher numbers, so can utilize bigger disks.
(I remember back in the old DOS days when DOS couldn't address more
than 32Mb hard drives!)

 

[Scott Alfter]

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Hash: SHA1

Well, even though you think I'm weird, I'm going to post an old
warning that came with a 233 Gateway, and if anyone can tell me the
answer to Why a 2.2 GB hard drive has (had?) to be partitioned, TIA:

"Large Capacity Hard Drive Partitioning"

"Your system has been shipped with a 2.2GB or larger capacity hard
drive installed. Due to certain limitations with current operating
system software (both MS-DOS and Windows 95), this hard drive must be
partitioned into two sections. This partitioning allows you to access
the maximum capacity of the drive in two sections. The first
partition is indicated by the C:\ prompt on your system, and the
second partition is indicated by the D:\ prompt.

If you have a sytem that uses the Windows NT operating system, it was
set at the factory so that it uses the FAT file system for your hard
drive. YOu can change the FAT to the NTFS by following instructions
given in the [manual]. USING THE NTFS ALLOWS WINDOWS NT TO ACCESS ALL
HARD DRIVE SPACE AS ONE PARTITION.

The current limitaitons of certain operating systems to recognize a
2.2GB or larger capacity hard drive in its entirety is an
industry-wide phenomenon, and it is not unique to Gateway 2000
systems."

What is (was) so special about 2.2GB?

FAT16 allowed partition sizes only up to 2GB in DOS and Win95 (4GB in NT 4).
A larger drive had to be partitioned to make all of the space available.
FAT32 and NTFS allow much larger partition sizes (somewhere in the terabyte
range, IIRC...there's a 200GB drive in one of my machines with a single NTFS
partition on it).

(To get to that 2GB partition size, the cluster size had to be increased to
32K. A one-byte file ended up wasting 32767 bytes of disk space. FAT32 and
NTFS deliver large-capacity filesystems while using a much smaller cluster
size, which means less wasted space.)

_/_ Scott Alfter (address in header doesn't receive mail)
/ v \ send mail to $firstname@$lastname.us
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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[Folkert Rienstra]

"Mute Fan" wrote

[snip]

Well, even though you think I'm weird, I'm going to post an old
warning that came with a 233 Gateway, and if anyone can tell me the
answer to Why a 2.2 GB hard drive has (had?) to be partitioned, TIA:

"Large Capacity Hard Drive Partitioning"

"Your system has been shipped with a 2.2GB or larger capacity hard
drive installed. Due to certain limitations with current operating
system software (both MS-DOS and Windows 95), this hard drive must be
partitioned into two sections. This partitioning allows you to access
the maximum capacity of the drive in two sections. The first
partition is indicated by the C:\ prompt on your system, and the
second partition is indicated by the D:\ prompt.

If you have a sytem that uses the Windows NT operating system, it was
set at the factory so that it uses the FAT file system for your hard
drive. YOu can change the FAT to the NTFS by following instructions
given in the [manual].
USING THE NTFS ALLOWS WINDOWS NT TO ACCESS
ALL HARD DRIVE SPACE AS ONE PARTITION.

The current limitaitons of certain operating systems to recognize a
2.2GB or larger capacity hard drive in its entirety is an industry-
wide phenomenon, and it is not unique to Gateway 2000 systems."

What is (was) so special about 2.2GB?

Nothing, really. It's just a logical limit of the number of sectors
that the FAT file system can address. It's a limit of the numbering
system in the FAT16 and FAT32 file systems used in Windows 95/98.

FAT16, not FAT32.

Windows NTFS can address higher numbers, so can utilize bigger disks.

So can FAT16, using 64kB clusters but apparently support for that was lacking.