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A few questions about partitions and foramtting

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12am

Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2002
Location
Calgary AB Canada
First I have read a few guides/stickies and not gotten the info I needed so I'm asking here. I have an 80gb drive split into 3 partitions C: D: E:. Now I am about to format the C: and D: partitions as I will be installing winxp. Now here are my questions. 1) If I type "format c:" will it only format the c: partition or will it format the whole hd including partitions d: and e: as I have critical files on e: that I don't want to loose? 2)besides better security/encryption is there any benefit to running an ntfs filesystem vs a fat32 filesystem?
 
I would say that typing "format c:" will only format the C: drive. Although if you're going to install XP, you can create, delete, and format partitions from within the XP setup program itself.

NTFS operates all around more efficiently that FAT.
 
DMac pretty much summed it all up. When you format, its seeing the drive as 3 drives and is not seeing that it is 1 drive split up. NTFS is all around better. Better speed and stabilty. Xp runs better on NTFS.

I have a 80 gig split into 3 drives like you. C: (20gig), D: (35gig), E: (20gig). I did this on a spare computer so I didnt have to keep loseing everything when the comp crashes and has to be formatted. I use D for games and apps and E for storage.
 
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