This article will discuss how to format, partition and reinstall windows 98 on your PC.

Before going ahead and doing this, it is important to be comfortable with terms format, partition and file systems.

Formatting creates magnetic markers, which define sectors where data is stored.

Basically you might want to format your hard drive if you are experiencing constant problems with your operating system. Another reason could be to clean out registry, which gets clogged up over time by installing programs (and spy ware and third party software which get installed without your knowledge).

It's also a good idea to format your hard drive if you are upgrading to a new operating system.

Partitioning is process of dividing space available on hard disk into blocks. One reason for partitioning is that it helps in organising data.

I.e. lets say you have an 80 GB hard disk drive. You can partition it to organize data into various categories like a drive for your Windows and system files and for your personal work. You can then have another separate drive for storing rest of your programs.

You can even have one more for storing all your multimedia files, and maybe even one for storing backups of all your important files.

Before going ahead and partitioning a drive it is important to understand how partitions actually work.

There are two kinds of partitions: primary DOS and extended DOS, and you can create logical DOS partitions within extended partitions.

The primary partition is your active partition and this is from where your computer boots, sort of like a system partition.

The extended partition is a placeholder where you can create all other logical partitions.

File System is basically way that files are stored on your computer. Windows 98 supports two kinds of file systems: File Allocation Table 16 (FAT 16) and file Allocation Table (FAT 32).

FAT 16 can support a drive of maximum 2 GB in size. For example, if you have an 8 GB hard disk, then you can have 4 drives of 2 GB each.

FAT 32 on other hand can support a drive of up to 2 Terabytes in size.

Before actually going ahead and doing reinstall it is advisable to back up any and all of your data and device drivers as a format will wipe out all your data on drive.

There are two ways of backing up your data and device drivers:

* Save them in a storage media like floppy drivers, CD's, zip disks etc.

* If you have a partitioned hard disk and you do not plan to format a particular drive then back up all your data there.

After performing your backups it's time to get down to formatting and partitioning (if you want to do that as well) your hard drive.

First you need to decide on a few things:

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