How do you format your laptop?

If you need to reformatting just to reinstall the operating system go to the Dell support site.

www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/04/KCS/KcsArticles/ArticleView?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&docid=DSN_362066

This will take you through restore installation from your recovery partition. Make sure you have copied off all your data as they will be over writen & lost.

You can reinstall from a disc, but as Kangaroo says you run the risk of over writing your recovery partition. If you do you can I believe buy a recovery disc (you pay for the postage!) from Dell if you are the first registered owner. Needed if your hard drive dies of course.
You should have burned off recovery discs from this partition, just in case so you can reload it on to the replacement.
Also it is a good idea to make a back up image using a third party recovery software such as from Paragon (free!) or Acronis to protect system & data against Disc failure or Virus attack.

If you just want to format a second partition (you have decided to keep you data separate from your system & program files) hit the start button, type "computer management" into the search, then select Disc Management & a partition diagram is shown, right click the partition to be reformatted, ( you cannot reformat the one your running on of course). You will be able to change the size of the partitions, but always make a back up as there is always a risk of loss of data or system damage (your hidden partition, Boot table). This is a very powerful tool so take care & keep it simple.

Thanks guy :)