The crux of the process occurs here in Step 3. The first part of this step is called partitioning your hard drive and it’s usually done with the DOS-based Fdisk program bundled with all versions of Windows. (Some people prefer third-party partitioning programs such as PowerQuest’s powerful PartitionMagic or QuarterDeck’s Partition It or Partition It Extra Strength for this process.) Partitioning involves organizing a single hard drive into logical chunks called partitions, as well as setting an overall file structure to be used on each partition, such as FAT16 or FAT32. The second half of this step is called reformatting and it basically wipes any existing data from each partition and prepares the partition to accept new files. (By the way, this is not the same thing as a true low-level hard drive format—these days that can typically only be done—and should only be done—at the factory.) Formatting is done with the DOS–based Format program, or simply within Windows itself, just as you do with a floppy disk.
Before getting into specific steps, you need to know a bit more about partitions, such as the fact that there are two main types: primary and extended. The most important difference between them is that primary partitions can be used to boot your computer and extended partitions cannot. In addition, unlike primary partitions—which actually hold data—extended partitions are themselves just containers for yet another kind of structure called logical DOS drives. So, for example, you might find that your hard drive is divided into one active partition and one extended partition and the extended partition contains two logical drives "inside" of it.
Each active partition and logical drive uses its own drive letter (i.e., C:\, D:\, E:\, etc.) and operates independently, so with multiple partitions, a single hard disk may "look" like multiple drives. In reality, however, it’s just one physical disk that’s organized into different containers. Of course, if you have multiple hard disks inside a computer, each of them uses a drive letter as well, so when you have multiple partitions on multiple disks, things can get kind of confusing.
If you want to run multiple operating systems on your PC—such as Windows ME and NT, or Windows 2000 and Linux—you often need to have multiple primary partitions. In some instances, such as with Windows 95 and NT, it's possible to have just one primary partition with two operating systems, but both operating systems need to be able to understand the partition scheme--such as FAT or FAT32 (see below for more)--for this to work.
The maximum number of primary and/or extended partitions you can have is four, but be aware that only one primary partition can be active (and therefore "visible" to the rest of your system) at once. On the other hand, other than the 26-letter drive limit—which does exist—there are no restrictions on the number of logical drives that you can have within an extended partition.
More importantly, multiple logical drives within an extended partition can be used and visible on your system at once. So, for example, if your system has an extended partition with two logical drives and one primary partition (you always have to have one of those), you would be able to see all three drive letters at once. On the other hand, if you have two primary partitions and one extended partition with two logical drives, you might only see three drive letters because the other primary partition and any data or programs stored on it would be invisible if the two primary partitions were completely different types (such as Ext2 for Linux and NTFS for Windows 2000). Again, if both operating systems "understand" the same partition type, then you might be able to see all four drive letters.
In many cases you’ll want to keep your entire disk as a single primary partition—and, therefore, single drive letter—although there are some cases where you can’t. Specifically, if you have a hard drive larger than 2 GB and you’re using the original version of Windows 95 or Win95A, you’ll have to use multiple partitions because of limitations in Win95 itself. (To find out what version of Windows you’re using, open the System Control Panel and look in the upper right portion of the General Tab. You should see a reference to Windows 95, 95A, 95B, 95C, 98, ME and 2000 underneath where it says System.)
Other limitations you may run into on disk size limits may be as a result of your computer’s BIOS. Some older BIOS’s had a hardware limitation of around 2.1 GB (some newer ones are limited to 8.4 GB), that prevents them from working with larger drives, but that can usually be fixed with a BIOS update. Check your computer manufacturer’s or motherboard manufacturer’s web site, or you can also try the Micro Firmware or Mr. BIOS sites.
If you have both an updated BIOS and Windows 95B (sometimes called OSR2) or later—including Windows 98 or Windows ME—then you can take advantage of the FAT32 (File Allocation Table 32-bit) file system and have a partition (or even multiple partitions) larger than 2 GB. Without going into too much detail, the basic reason for this is that FAT32 is able to keep track of a much larger number of individual file elements than the older FAT16 file system (which is more commonly referred to just as FAT). This translates into the ability to work with larger partitions.
Before you actually begin the partitioning process, you need to decide how you want to partition your drive—if you want to keep it all as one big drive, or if you want several different partitions/logical drives with one for data, one for programs, etc. In addition, if you plan to try out or regularly work with multiple operating systems (OS's), you’ll have to plan for that at this stage. You’ll also need something called a boot loader if you install multiple OS's—one comes bundled with PartitionMagic and another comes with Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. A boot loader is a program that lets you decide which primary partition to make active at boot-up. The OS that is loaded from the active partition is the one that gets "control" over the machine for that particular session.
Once you have a basic strategy figured out, you can move onto the specific steps. The following describes how the process works with Fdisk. (If you’re using PartitionMagic, or some other utility, you’ll have to follow different steps, but the concepts will be similar.)
First you need to boot your computer with your boot floppy and then launch the Fdisk program as soon as you get to the A:\ prompt. To do that, just type in Fdisk and then hit Enter or Return. If you’re running the version of Fdisk that comes with Windows 95 OSR2 or later (including 98, 98 SE, or ME), you’ll first see a kind of obscure text message and question about having support for large disks to which you answer yes or no. Though there’s no specific mention of it, this question is asking whether or not you want to use FAT32. If you answer yes, you’ll get FAT32 and if you answer no you’ll get a FAT16-formatted drive. (Of course, if you have Windows 98, you can convert from FAT16 to FAT32 with the bundled FAT32 Driver Converter after the fact. If you have Windows 95, however, you’ll either have to start all over again to switch to FAT32, or purchase a third-party tool such as PartitionMagic.)
Once you’ve answered the question, you’ll be presented with four numeric choices from which you can create a new partition, delete an existing partition, make one of the partitions active or get more information on the current partitions you have. In general, I’d recommend selecting option 4 first to get more information about your current partitions.
If you’re going to switch from multiple partitions to a single partition or if you want to adjust the size of your current partitions, you’ll first need to delete all but the primary active partition. Before you can delete an extended partition, however, you first need to delete any logical drives that are inside the extended partition. To make any of these deletions, select option 3 off the main Fdisk menu and follow the directions. You’re always given a warning before you do anything destructive, so if you take your time, you shouldn’t run into any serious problems.
To create new partitions or logical drives or to resize the remaining primary partition, select option 1. If you want to use logical drives, you first need to create an extended partition to hold them and then you can create the logical drives. In all cases, you’ll need to know how large you want the partitions and/or logical drives to be in megabytes, so do your math ahead of time. If you’re resizing a single partition, simply make the partition the same size as the available disk size. Also remember that all hard drives use a certain amount of space for disk overhead so don’t get upset when your new 8 GB hard drive (or whatever size you have) doesn’t have eight full gigabytes (or whatever its advertised capacity is) for creating partitions.
Once you’ve finished your partitioning, you can exit from Fdisk by simply hitting the Esc button at the main Fdisk screen. As the ensuing screen says, you’ll have to restart before the changes take effect and before you can re-format the newly created or resized partitions.
By the way, if you opt for something like PartitionMagic, you’ll find the partitioning process more intuitive and more flexible than what Fdisk provides. For example, you can resize partitions graphically without having to first delete them, and you can easily switch a particular partition back and forth between FAT16 and FAT32, among other capabilities.
Regardless of how you partition the drive, however, the re-formatting process is very simple. Once again, you’ll need to restart the computer with the boot floppy installed and when you get to the A:\ prompt, type in:
Format C: /s
What this command does is reformats the active primary partition on your main drive—in other words, it reformats your hard drive. The /s switch at the end of the command tells the computer to also copy over the basic DOS system files to the hard disk so that you can then restart from the hard disk and boot to a C:\ DOS prompt if you want. To continue onward with Step 4, however, you’ll probably want to boot from your boot floppy.
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