So what do you guys use? Its starting to get annoying when people say reformat when you actually just type format in the command. Saying reformat sounds more like formatting then formatting again for no reason.
The re- prefix means that you are repeating an action that you have previously performed. It is a compact way of expressing the idea of repetition.
Consider the following sentences:-
I started my car engine, then I stopped it, then I started it again.
You could rewrite that as
I started my car engine, then I stopped it, then I restarted it.
The second sentence is one word shorter. See? Less typing. Less effort.
When a disk is new, it is blank, and needs to be partitioned and formatted for the first time. Subsequent to that, if you wish to be exact, you would have to talk about "re"partitioning and "re"formatting. However, many people do not, especially if they speaking or writing informally. English is like that. You are allowed to be lazy and break the rules. Maybe your native language is one in which this is considered "wrong", but if you are beginning to communicate with English speakers and writers, it is a fact of life that you are just going to have to get used to.
PS If you are such a zealot for "correctness", you should note that in written English, questions such as this
Quote: So what do you guys use.
Have to have a question mark at the end, not a period. It looks like this ?
It "starts to get annoying" when people don't use them!
Well, I personally would probably just say or write "format" unless I wanted to specifically draw attention to the fact that the partition was already formatted. For example I might say that I was reformatting a FAT32 partition with NTFS, or that I was reformatting my Windows partition.
i did a format just the other day,i used a win98 start up disk with the f-disk command (format c: ) then i use the install disk..
works with xp-poop and the great windows 2000..
did not try it with window me-2 (vista)
When you run the fdisk and format commands, the Master Boot Record (MBR) and file allocation tables are created. The MBR and file allocation tables store the necessary disk geometry that allows hard disk to accept, store, and retrieve data. For additional information about MS-DOS partitioning and a hard disk geometry overview, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
69912 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69912/EN-US/) MS-DOS Partitioning Summary
