# Best way to format my winXP partition?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-format-my-winxp-partition/166693>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 5, 2003, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-format-my-winxp-partition/166693 "2003-04-05T17:17:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ForumBot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ee59a6/32.png) [@ForumBot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForumBot)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2003, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-format-my-winxp-partition/166693/1 "2003-04-05T17:17:57Z")

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Windows XP has proven to me that it really isn’t worth the almost 3 gigs it wants by itself, so I’m back to Linux.

How would I go about formatting my C: drive, without needing to boot into windows? Keep in mind that I have my Red Hat 7 CD right here (complete with fdisk and Disk Druid).

I don’t have a floppy drive–so a boot disk is out of the question.

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**Author:** ![heresiarch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@heresiarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heresiarch)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2003, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-way-to-format-my-winxp-partition/166693/2 "2003-04-05T18:39:02Z")

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You want to totally wipe out Windows, start from scratch and just run Linux?

When the computer boots, go into the BIOS and tell it to boot from the CD-ROM.

Pop in the Red Hat install disk. It will give you the option to partition and format the drives as part of the installation.