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| Partition Your Hard Drive Using FDISK |
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How To August 1999 • Vol.5 Issue 8 |
Partition Your Hard Drive Using FDISK | ||
 Although it sounds scary, partitioning is really just breaking your hard drive into separate units, fooling Windows and DOS into thinking you have more than one hard drive. Most users partition primarily for organization purposes. Windows and DOS include a utility named FDISK that partitions your drives. However, if you repartition drives using FDISK, you will lose any files, data, and programs that are on those drives. This means Windows will be destroyed if you repartition the drive on which it is located. Naturally, you do not want to take this lightly. We need to start with some definitions. The primary DOS partition is the partition from which your Windows operating system and DOS run, and you can have only one. The extended DOS partition (again, you can have only one) is where the other partitions are stored. The logical DOS drives are secondary partitions that DOS treats just like separate drives.  The Process. Here are the basics. First, create a bootable system diskette. For more information, see "Managing & Maintaining Your Files " in this issue. Make sure your boot diskette includes copies of Format.com and Fdisk.com. Generally you can find these in the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND directory. Second, perform a full backup of your system, regardless of whether you plan on destroying and rebuilding your hard drive. Third, restart your computer in MS-DOS mode by clicking Start, Shutdown, then selecting Restart In MS-DOS Mode. Click OK to continue. When you're at the MS-DOS prompt, you need to change the directory to run FDISK. Type cd\windows\command, press ENTER, then type FDISK, and press ENTER. If your hard drive is larger than 512MB, FDISK will ask if you want to enable large drive support. Do so unless you need PCs with older operating systems to access your PCs files, but this is mostly for network users. Because most home users are not on a network, you can safely choose Yes here. You will see the FDISK main menu. Select option 4 to see your drive's present configuration. Press ESC to return to the main menu. You may have to delete some old partitions to make room for your new ones. Select 3 from the main menu. Note that you have four options here. Go in reverse order, deleting any non-DOS partitions first (option 4), any logical DOS drives (3), the extended partition, if present (2), then the primary partition (1). Your drive probably will not have all these types, but you'll know which ones you have after looking at the configuration in the previous step. After you select an option, you'll be asked to select the number of the partition you want to delete, then you'll be asked to confirm the deletion again. After you confirm your choice, FDISK deletes the partition. Press ESC to return to the previous menu. Repeat this process until all the partitions that you need to delete are gone and you have made room for your new partitions. Create your new partitions. Create your new primary DOS partition first if you deleted the previous one. Then, if you're creating other partitions, use option 2 to create the extended DOS partition, then option 3 to create logical drives. In each case, the process is similar. FDISK will test the drive for errors, then prompt you to enter the size of the new partition. You also may be prompted to name the drive. After you create an extended partition, FDISK will prompt you to create logical partitions automatically, because there is no reason to have an extended partition without logical drives. Repeat the steps above until you finish creating all the drives you want. When you're finished, keep pressing ESC until you get to the warning that says you must restart for your changes to take effect. When you get back to the DOS prompt, restart immediately using your boot diskette. Format your new drives using the format command (you need to run it from your boot diskette). If you have three drives (C, D, and E) you'll run format c:, format d:, and format e:. Re-install Windows and/or DOS if you deleted them in them partitioning. Finally, restore your data from backup. Note that adding drives may change the letter of your CD-ROM drive; this may force you to re-install your CD-ROM programs. Having said all of that, you may want to consider buying a partitioning utility such as V Communications' Partition Commander or PowerQuest's Partition Magic. These programs can partition your drive with greater ease and without losing data. Also, these utilities often can partition drives in formats other than DOS, which allows you much greater flexibility.  by Shawn Mummert |
