Disk Partitioning and Formatting Programs

Virtually every operating system today ships with a complete set of utilities for partitioning and formatting disks, both hard and floppy. The tools used for operating systems that use the FAT file system have not changed much in the last 10 or more years; if you are using DOS, Windows 3.x or Windows 95, you will still use the same set of DOS utilities. A complete coverage of DOS commands is beyond the scope of this site, but I wanted to include this section that make brief mention of the primary utilities (both DOS and third-party) that are used for setting up disks.

Warning: All hard disk partitioning and formatting utilities work with the disk at an intimate level. There is always a chance of data loss when using these programs. As always, performing a complete backup before changing your system is prudent. If you are careful, in most cases you will have no problems, but especially if you are attempting to change existing disk structures that contain data, there is a slight risk of problems. In particular, loss of power during sensitive disk operations can leave a disk volume in an unusable state. Using a UPS is prudent; at the very least, don't do the obviously silly (say, trying to resize all your disk's partitions during a big thunderstorm...)

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