win7 Will the C drive get hurt?

[IntegralDerivative]

dad thinks that if i format these drives, the c drive will get hurt.

[f0rk_b0mb]

Formating D & E? Nope. C:/ is fine Dad. :)

[InterceptorX]

What?

[mps69]

Should be fine, can he explain his cause for concern?

[IntegralDerivative]

Should be fine, can he explain his cause for concern?

Well, our laptop is a thinkpad edge netbook and he thinks those are partitions of C.

[f0rk_b0mb]

Well, our laptop is a thinkpad edge netbook and he thinks those are partitions of C.

Does your laptop have 3 drives? If not, then yes they may be partitions of C.

[xirtam]

They are all most likely partitions of the same physical hard drive but the partitions are independent, so will not effect each other by being formatted;

however they may actually be system/recovery partitions.

[cybertimber2008]

TylerC: Partitions of a partition? ...well I gues it's possible in an extended partition, sure.

Formatting the "drives" D and E - either as seperate, physical drives or "partitions" on the same drive that has the "partition" C - will not affect the partition C.

That said, the best suggestion is to always backup your files and system before doing anything.

[Detection]

Well, our laptop is a thinkpad edge netbook and he thinks those are partitions of C.

If you format them from within Windows it should be fine, as long as the MBR is on C:\

Why are they not showing their capacity like C: is ?

[f0rk_b0mb]

^ Yup. Is there anything on then? Make sure before you do format.

[Hum]

Why Format at all ? Did D and E get a virus ? Simply Delete files you don't want.

Are you planning on combining the partitions into C ?

Definitely back-up any important personal files, including Documents, photos, music, fonts, and bookmarks.

[mduren2445]

put dad at ease and backup or image c drive that way if something does flub up then you are ok

[BeerFan]

This topic is making me nearly spew the beer i just sipped out of my face.

Ok, let's start with this: open up Disk Management and post a screenshot of your results.

[IntegralDerivative]

Here.

[Riggers]

There all partitions of the same drive but basically in RAW form. Just format each one to NTFS, nothing should happen to C:\ Just back up any really really important stuff first ;)

[bodmas]

looking at the snapshot of disk management, those partitions were created through windows 7 DVD. one C drive 100,000 MB (100 MB system reserved partiton automatically created)and then created two other partitions viz D and E on the same volume but after creation of partitons the person did not format the D and E partitions and proceeded to install on the C partiton. proceeding to install on particular partition (here C) does not require to format separately as it does automatically. it seems the person who installed windows 7 either did not aware of format function after creations of paritions or just become lazy or forgot to format D and E partitions.

formating D and E partitions/drives either through windows explorer or via Disk Management will not affect on C drive. In fact through windows if you want to format any drives will not affect at all to its windows drive. if affected then at the time of format it will not allow you.

so go for format.