Partitioning means writing the hard drive sectors that will make up the partition table. It contains information on the partition, including sector size, position with respect to the primary partition ...

Formatting a hard drive along with the install of a new OS is the best option. The vast majority of operating system installations provide a "format" option as part of the installation process.

When buying a new computer or laptop, the latest operating system is often already installed. If not, and you have the original media that the OS is on, you can perform the installation yourself. For ...

Partitioning your hard drive sounds like a technically involved task that most people don’t need to bother with—but it’s actually relatively simple to do, doesn’t have to cost you any money, and can ...

Partitioning your hard drive makes managing the operating system, files, and file formats of each partition easier. For example, you can install Windows 11/10 on one partition and store movies or ...

So you want to try out Windows 8. Excellent! But you’re not foolhardy enough to try using a developer preview build as your main work/play operating system–you just want to dabble. We’ll show you how ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover the exciting intersection of Linux and handheld gaming. This article is more than 6 years old. I've written about two ...