This guide is not intended to replace the wealth of knowledge that is in many FAQ's and already existing guides across the internet. Many people who know far more than I have written extensive guides, resources and articles on this subject. I have just written a layman's guide on partitioning and formatting a hard drive from my own personal experience and that gleamed from the multitude of information sources that already exist.

Please don't fence me in. Partitions, formatting and your hard drive.

At one stage or another everyone will have to set up, partition and format a hard drive. It is one of the most basic steps in building or rebuilding a computer, installing a new drive or rebuilding from a major OS crash. Many pc users don't know how to partition and format a hard drive or aren't aware of all the options available to them. It's nothing to hang your head in shame about. Even the best of us have to refer back to a "how to guide" to refresh ourselves on the steps.

This guide will take you through the basics with step by step instructions and information on how to plan, format and partition a hard drive whether it is brand new or currently has data existing on it.

Before you begin. These are important steps before you begin any hard drive installation, partition and format.

"Does the hard drive you are planning to partition and format have any data that you want to keep?"

If yes back it up NOW to a recordable media such as a floppy, zip disc, CDR, CDRW or even another hard drive. Once you format a hard drive the information that was on it is erased and only recoverable by professionals in data recovery and even then the data may not be totally recoverable.

Shut down and unplug your computer from the power source and make every effort to ground yourself before attempting to physically disconnect or connect any new device to your computer.

Using FDISK will destroy any information on a hard drive that it is being used on. Have you backed up and gathered the required software utility tools? Read this guide for required software utilities.

"I have another hard drive that I can transfer data to but it isn't formatted. What can I do?"

You can read this guide and follow the steps on how to format this hard drive as a single primary dos partition. Once that drive is formatted you can hook it up and reboot your computer providing the computer is still properly functioning. Your computer's OS, if still functioning properly, will detect the new hard drive and allow you to access it through MY COMPUTER. Ensure the BIOS is set properly for your computer to boot off the correct hard drive. After the computer has finished loading your OS, auto-detected the new drive and rebooted then you can use MY COMPUTER to open a window to your new hard drive. Use MY COMPUTER again to open another new window to the data you want to save. Simply drag and drop the files you want to keep from the original location to the new hard drive window.

If you think you can drag Microsoft Office over and expect it to work when you put it back...guess again. You cannot save most programs this way and expect them to work by dragging them back to the new hard drive to the PROGRAM FILES. Most (90%) programs have to be installed using their built in installation tools.

When you have completed transferring the data you want to keep you can shut down your computer, unplug it, and disconnect your spare hard drive from the motherboard by unplugging the hard drive from the ribbon cable it is attached to or unplugging the ribbon cable itself from the motherboard. Do this if the only device using that ribbon cable was the new drive you transferred data to.

After your new hard drive is setup, partitioned and formatted you can reconnect the data storage hard drive and transfer your files back to your newly set up hard drive.

Nickel tour of the hard drive

Planning how you are going to set up, partition and format a hard drive is an important step. I strongly suggest you do this on paper first so you have the numbers to refer back to as you are making the partitions. To help you understand why you can choose to create multiple partitions it is best that you understand how a hard drive works at a basic level.

A hard drive is made up of one or more platters or discs. Information is stored magnetically on one or both sides of a platter. The larger the capacity of your hard drive can mean more platters are in a hard drive or the more "sides" of a platter are used or a combination of both. Information is read off the platters by a reader/writer arm that moves back and forth across the surface as the hard drive platters spin; typically at 5,400 or 7,200 RPM. The reader head does not physically touch the surface of the platter but "floats" extremely close to it. The reader/writer arm "flicks" back and forth very quickly too. Up to 50 times a second.

Sometimes not all of the "sides" of a hard drive's platters are used. This depends on the total capacity of a hard drive. A hard drive that has three platters may use all six sides to achieve a total storage capacity of 20 gigabytes whereas the same hard drive with the same amount of platters may only use five sides to achieve a total capacity of 15 gigabytes.

Simply put...hard drive manufacturers do this in order to produce a wide variety of storage capacities using roughly the same construction technique and parts within that family of hard drives. For example a 40 gigabyte hard drive and a 60 gigabyte hard drive may be identical except for the number of platter sides used and the amount of necessary reader/writer heads.

Information is stored on your hard drive in tracks and sectors. Tracks are like concentric rings (red) on the platter surface. Sectors (green) are sections of these rings.

When you access information or install information to your hard drive the data does not always remain grouped neatly together. A program or piece of information, like the letter to your mother you should have sent weeks ago, may be stored the across several rings and sectors. The reader/writer head has to jump around to "assemble" the complete file. This is called fragmentation and occurs when the pieces of a file or the files themselves are spread all over the hard drive; much like taking a puzzle and spreading it all over your front yard. The more it is spread out the more work it takes to assemble the complete picture. That is one of the things that we are going to attempt to do here is to minimize the influences of fragmentation.

Also take a look at the hard drive platter again. If you stood on the furthest ring from the center you would cover more distance in one complete revolution compared to standing nearer to the centre. This means that as you move from the centre outwards the hard drive becomes minutely faster; the furthest ring from the center being the fastest. It's not much faster and not by any means that you may notice but every little tweak helps with a computer's performance. Remember this detail as it will become apparent later on.

If the hard drive reader arm has to "float" to a sector on an inner ring for a piece of information then return to an outer ring for the next piece of information an so on to assemble enough information to start your word processing program or play a game you can see how disorganized this can be.

Partition basics

"What is a partition and why should I use them?"

Think of a hard drive partition as a fence or barrier. A hard drive with a single C: drive or no partition "fence" can become quite messy. To picture this in your head then think of a hard drive as a young boy's bedroom. It's all in there but it can become a complete pigsty of toys and clothes that are strewn about without any hint of organization. Once in a while you may clean it up but it's bound to become a mess again.

So you want to create a sense of organization in that boy's bedroom (hard drive) that has only one fence (partition)...c: drive. or as I like to say..."C what a mess it is."

How do you do this? If you were to divide that room in half and put clothes on one side and toys on the other it would be a bit more organized. There's still room for improvement. Divide that same room into four and put clean clothes in one quarter, dirty in another, books in the third and all other toys in the fourth and the organization improves even more.

You can keep dividing up this room to create more and more ways to organize but there comes a time when creating so many dividing walls is just plain silly. So when is that? There is no hard and fast rule as to how many partitions you should make on a hard drive but I'll show you the way I did mine and why I chose certain partition sizes. This will help by giving you a few performance tweaks that you can apply to your own OS.

For our purposes in the computer world or partition organization a hard drive has two parts.

1) Primary partitions

2) Extended partition

If you wanted only a C: drive on your hard drive you would use FDISK to create a primary dos partition that was the entire available drive size, set it active and format it. You would then be done and ready to install the OS.

But the purpose here is to create a sense of organization by creating multiple partitions. You do this by creating a primary dos partition first that was the size you wanted your C drive to be in MB. Then create an extended dos partition for the remaining maximum allowable space. The extended dos partition is not of any use to you until you create logical dos drives within the extended dos partition. Think of the extended dos partition as a bed for the new logical dos drives or partitions you want; D, E, F, G, etc. Simply enter the size of the logical dos drives one at a time until you use up the remaining allowable space that is the extended DOS partition as you had planned on paper before even getting to this stage.

"Did I drop a big enough hint about planning?"

If you are getting to Z drive then perhaps you'd best be rethinking your partition plan as I suspect you may have taken the whole organization concept a little to heart but if you really want a Z drive then fill your boots.

Let's look at a graphical representation. First the total capacity of the hard drive is represented by this flat line.

You create a primary partition

Then an extended partition

And then the first logical DOS drive within the extended DOS partition.

And finally the last logical DOS drive within the extended DOS partition.

Exposing my own hard drive

Here's a real world example of what size partitions and why I set them up a particular way.

Mediaman's personal hard drive exposed.

I like to plan my partitions on paper. The first thing you should know is the total capacity of your hard drive which is typically given in Gigabytes. The second thing you should know is that 1 Gigabyte is 1,024 Megabytes. The third thing you should know is that the math doesn't always work out. You may find that you were expecting that last partition to be 500 Megabytes and it turns out to only be 335.

There is a valid reason for why your new 40 GB hard drive may only show up as 39.2 GB. I can understand your frustration. After all you just paid for almost a GB that you don't get. This is a direct quote from Seagate's FAQ.

"Several factors may come into play when you see the reported capacity of a disc drive. Unfortunately there are two different number systems which are used to express units of storage capacity; binary, which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1024 bytes, and decimal, which says that a kilobyte is equal to 1000 bytes. The storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal. Even though in binary you have more bytes, the decimal representation of a Gbyte shows greater capacity. In order to accurately understand the true capacity of your disc drive, you need to know which base unit of measure (binary or decimal) is being used to represent capacity. Another factor that can cause misrepresentation of the size of a disc drive is BIOS limitations. Many older BIOS are limited in the number of cylinders they can support."

Live with it.

A web based binary digit converter can help you out if you can't figure it out using pencil and paper. So here's the "what I did" and "why I did it".

C drive: This is my OS drive and Windows XP likes a 4 GB partition. Other OS's can get away with two GB. I only install the OS to the C drive and install all of my programs to another partition and games to yet another. You can trim up wasted space this way and how much depends on what you move. Presently my WinXP OS takes up only 1.22 GB So I could easily go with a 2 GB partition. I can only achieve this by turning off hibernate support which reserves a space on the hard drive equivalent to the amount of ram in your computer. I have 1 GB of ram therefore I would need 2.22 GB of space. You see why I left it at four. I could have chosen three...but I have 40 GB of hard drive space so why not. Perhaps in a future reinstall I'll trim it down to 3 GB.

D drive: My D drive is a 1 GB partition I reserve for the page file. In WinXP and Win2K it's called the page file and in Win9x it would be known as virtual memory. After the OS is installed I move the page file or virtual memory file to this partition. This way it doesn't interfere with the OS if accessed. It is on the D drive next to the OS. Remember that theory about the further away from the centre the faster the drive? C is the fastest and D is the next fastest.

E Drive: I set this at 4GB for my program install drive. When I am installing any programs I choose custom installation and change the default installation directory of C: to an E:. This keeps programs from interfering with the OS. Remember that once the OS is loaded at boot it is pretty well ignored after that. If you are changing programs a lot they are being read and re-read from the hard drive often and best to contain that amount of traffic to one area thus not causing unwanted fragmentation in another.

4 GB is about 4 times the room that you'll need. I have two complete office suites, many adobe products and many other programs installed. This is typically a lot more than the average user and even then the programs I installed only take up 800 MB. But I have a 40 GB hard drive so I do have the luxury of space.

F Drive: This is a 1 GB scratch drive for my Adobe products. Programs like Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects can access the hard drive on a temporary basis when manipulating large files. Using the same theory of the page file I like to contain any "messing about" of files to a single area and thus not disrupting other files.

G Drive: What else?...Games. These can typically take up more room; 2 to 3 hundred Megabytes each depending on installation options so I gave it 4 GB of elbow room. Again in the install process of the game I choose G: instead of the default of C:.

H Drive: This 8GB monster contains my entire work database information from my office. It has all of the files on it that my office PC has such as client lists, budgets, letters, documents, scripts, etc. Being somewhat of an organization freak I don't want to mix up my work documents with Short-Media documents. I wouldn't want to accidentally post a new creative concept for one of my clients instead of a review.

I Drive: What else? Short-Media This 4 GB partition houses all of the reviews, pictures, and information that I do for Short-Media. I somewhat goofed in not making this an 8 GB partition as well as I seem to have taken a short amount of time to chew up half of it already. Time to do some housecleaning I think. See why it's important to plan out your needs now and in the future.

J Drive: Storage: Another 4 GB partition that I had set aside for...well...storage. This may become the new image repository for Short-Media thus alleviating some space concerns on I:

K Drive: Songs This 5 GB partition is MP3 'o' rama. Loads of room to store MP3's

L Drive: Archive I set aside 1 GB to archive utilities and downloaded programs that I use in setting up a computer. It contains drivers, zip programs, bios files, all the "nuts and bolts" that I need to get my OS up and running and tweaked.

M Drive: Backup. I set aside 6 GB for Norton GHOST. Ghost is a handy utility that allows you to clone a partition and make "copy" of it. If I have a major crash I can replace the fubared OS with the working "copy" I typically keep a cloned copy of the clean installed OS after all the programs are installed and my system is tweaked. In addition to this I keep two current clones. Each of the current copies is two weeks apart and I keep leap-frogging them in updates. That way I have a current and 2nd most current copy to fall back on if I installed or did something that hosed my system after a few days of use. I also have the fail safe original copy in case all else fails. It may be a bit over the top for safety but that's my choice. It doesn't have to be yours.

N Drive: Getting near the end of the drive now for capacity so I set a 500 MB drive to hold my temporary internet files and temp files. This moves those constantly changing files out of the OS area again minimizing files "jostling" each other. I can also use this area to unzip files to prior to installation.

O Drive: Here we are at the end. The center of the hard drive and what ever I have left over is for a drive which I called downloads. Yup....everything I download whether it is images, programs, drivers or what not goes here first. I also, like with N, use this partition to unzip files to. This is supposed to be temporary and once done with the file I ether archive it, put it in songs, save it someplace else...or decide it's garbage and delete it. Once in a while I reformat this partition through the windows tools much like wiping a chalkboard clean with soap and water.

So there you have it. That's how I organized my hard drive based upon my needs. It doesn't necessarily have to be the way you organize yours but I would suggest that you do set C as your OS drive, D as a page file drive, E as programs and F for games. If you do not have any programs that utilize a scratch disk then you forgo making a scratch drive like I did. I would also suggest that you create a temporary drive near the end for no other reason than general neatness so you can place the temporary files and temporary internet files on it.

Temporary files and temporary internet files are like kids in that boy's bedroom I described nearer the beginning of this article. If you contain them to one area of the room they can only mess up that area and not tear the whole place apart.

The same theory can be applied to everything else. With a bit of organization you can minimize how everything "bumps" into each other. These tweaks can reduce the time taken to defragment your hard drive. Using my hard drive as an example I don't access my ARCHIVE partition that much so it doesn't really get fragmented. I'm always on the internet so my temporary internet files folder is quite active That file isn't "mixed in" with the OS and thus the hard drive activity with that file doesn't "bump into" the OS files. Remember that a file can be spread across several sectors on a ring and across several rings in that partition. It makes for smoother operation of your whole computer.

Now go grab a piece of paper and scratch out a little organization table before you begin to format and partition.

Problems?

"ATA33/66/100/133....How do I tell if I have the right cable?"

The odds are in your favor that you are going to have the correct ribbon cable to connect the hard drive to the motherboard. You will only have two types of cables in your computer that obviously different. One type of cable connects your devices such as the CD-ROM, hard drive and DVD to the motherboard and the other connects the floppy drive.

The floppy drive cable is not as wide...roughly ½ inch less.

It is getting rarer these days but you may encounter two types of ribbon connector cables; 40-wire and 80-wire. At first glance these two cables appear similar but there are differences.

The first is the amount of wires and you can see this very quickly upon closer inspection. The 80 wire cable is on the left. Note the tighter grain of wires.

The second is that 40-wire cables typically have 3 black connectors while 80-wire cables have two black and one blue. The blue end always connects to the motherboard.

The third is more subtle. An 80-wire cable has one specific "hole" blocked. This is pin 20 or the key pin. It corresponds to a missing pin in many newer devices. This way the cable can only be inserted one way thus guaranteeing the proper connection.

The older 40-wire cables lack this key pin and thus have all 40 "holes" open. This key pin is in addition to the small bump or tab that is on one side of the cable to also ensure that you are connecting the cable properly.

Wherever possible remain with the 80-wire cables as a rule of thumb. With today's newer technology it will be tough to find a device that must use a 40-wire cable.

"My hard drive is brand new...what next?"

Let's assume that you have checked the jumper settings to make sure the hard drive is properly set to master or slave, depending on how you hooked it up, and connected it properly to the motherboard and hooked up the power.

First check with the manufacturer's website for a hard drive set up utility or skip ahead and read the section on using FDISK.

"My drive's totally hosed dude...I think I caught a virus or something."

Otherwise known as taking the low level format road.

"Sometimes hard drive problems can be caused by a bad ribbon cable."

First make sure it isn't a faulty cable or the wrong type of cable. The best way to check for a faulty cable is to replace the cable with one that you know works or a brand new ribbon cable. The quick check of the proper type of cable or 80-wire was explained previously.

Second is to try the drive on IDE 1 or 2 if you have a raid motherboard then move it across to the raid IDE connectors afterwards.

Third is to check the jumpers on the hard drive to make sure that they are set correctly. If you have the drive plugged into.

You may also try typing a DOS command FIX/MBR which "fixes" the master boot record of your hard drive. Typically this can work to solve errors but if you are suspecting that you have a boot virus that is stubborn to an anti-virus emergency repair disk then you can perform a low level format.

Low level formatting can hose your drive if done incorrectly. If you are at all unsure of what you are doing...go ask someone who does. Your particular hard drive manufacturer may also have instructions and downloadable utilities that you can use to safely low level format your drive.

The only reason that you should be performing a low level format is, according to many manufacturers, this one from Seagate:

1. The drive has contracted a virus that cannot be removed without destroying the boot sector.
   
2. The drive is developing bad sectors at an increasing rate.
   
3. You are changing from one operating system to another and wish to remove everything from the drive.
   

Low level formatting destroys 100% of the data on the drive so if you haven't backed up any data you want to keep to another source other than the hard drive itself do it now.

I remind you to look to the hard drive manufacturer's web site for tools, instructions and utilities prior to performing a low level format. For example Maxtor has an all in one self booting floppy that has low level formatting tools and hard drive partition and formatting tools which makes setting up or rebuilding a hard drive a piece of cake. These tools can be for a specific manufacturer and a specific drive or family of drives. I would not use these tools only on the recommended hard drives.

Tools of the trade

"My hard drive manufacturer doesn't have a partition and format setup utility...what do I do?"

You may think you are between a rock and a hard drive at this moment but you aren't. You are going to need a Win98 boot disk which you can get from http://www.bootdisk.com/. Download a boot disk file and extract it to a formatted floppy. You are also going to need a utility called FDISK. This tool may already be on the Win98 boot disk and the best way to check is to open the freshly extracted boot disk in explorer and see if it has a file called FDISK.

If not you can get the free dos FDISK utility from www.FDISK.com. Extract that to another floppy or transfer the extracted files to the Win98 boot disk.

That's all you are going to need to begin partitioning and formatting your hard drive. Remember to set the first boot device as the floppy drive in the motherboard bios menu. Refer to your motherboard manual if you are lost. If you lost your motherboard manual go to the manufacturer's website and download the manual for your motherboard. If you are too lazy to do that...the setting is usually found in the Advanced Bios Features section of the bios main menu.

"I had my hard drive setup before as NTFS. Is this a problem?"

Yes if you don't want to low level format. FDISK from a DOS/Win9x boot disk will only delete the primary partition but not the partitions in the extended space. You have a choice to low level format the hard drive or use a utility called delpart.exe. The Delpart tool is included with the Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 Resource Kit only. It is not included in the Windows NT 3.5, 3.51 or 4.0 Resource Kits. Place the file on the Win98 boot disk and type delpart.exe at the command prompt. Once you are done deleting all the NTFS partitions then reboot and continue with FDISK as per normal.

FDISK and the primary DOS partition

Using FDISK

Using FDISK will destroy any information on a hard drive that it is being used on. Have you backed up and gathered the required software utility tools? Read this guide for required software utilities.

Name the drives in windows and not in FDISK. Just leave the name blank when FDISK asks you to enter a drive name. The alpha setting (C, D, E, F, G etc.) is automatic.

Place the boot disk in the floppy drive and power up the computer. At the dos prompt command type FDISK. The first screen you will see will look like this.

Your computer has a disk larger than 512 MB. This version of Windows includes improved support for large disks, resulting in more efficient use of disk space on large drives, and allowing disks over 2 GB to be formatted as a single drive.

IMPORTANT: If you enable large disk support and create any new drives on this disk, you will not be able to access the new drive(s) using other operating systems, including some versions of Windows 95 and Windows NT, as well as earlier versions of Windows and MS-DOS. In addition, disk utilities that were not designed explicitly for the FAT32 file system will not be able to work with this disk. If you need to access this disk with other operating system or older disk utilities, do not enable large drive support.

Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N).......? [Y]

Odds are that you have a drive larger than 512 MB so type Y for yes if it isn't already there and press enter.

This is the main menu. Choose 1. create DOS partition or logical dos drive if you are setting up a blank hard drive or a hard drive that has no partitions on it. Choose 2. Set active partition to make the primary dos partition (usually C:) active or the boot partition. Choose 3 if you are deleting fat 16 or fat 32 partitions that may already exist on your hard drive. That may be the case if you are working with a hard drive that was previously in use. Remember that you start by deleting first the logical drives, then the extended the dos partition and finally the primary dos partition. Then start over building the partitions to your liking.

Microsoft Windows 98 Fixed Disk Setup Program © Copyright Microsoft Corp. 1983-1998

FDISK Options

Current fixed disk drive: 1 Choose one of the following:

1. 2 3 4 Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive Set active partition Delete partition or Logical DOS Drive Display partition information

Enter choice: [1]

Press Esc to exit FDISK

Let's assume that you are working with a brand new 30 GB hard drive that you want to format and partition for three equally sized drives, C, D and E.

First choose 1) Create Dos partition or logical dos drive.

You will be given three choices of which you will choose 1: Create primary DOS partition. This is the first step and must be done before creating an extended DOS partition that must be done before creating logical dos drives. Understand the order of things yet?

Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive

Current fixed disk drive: 1 Choose one of the following:

1. 2 3 Create Primary DOS partition Create Extended DOS Partition Create Logical DOS Drive(s) in the Extended DOS Partition

Enter choice: [1]

Press Esc to return to FDISK Options

You will be given a choice to make the maximum available size for the primary DOS partition. If you were to type Y and press enter then the entire drive would be C: and thus a single partition. We don't want to do this when we want a D and E drive. Type N for no and press enter.

Create Primary DOS Partition

Current fixed disk drive: 1

Do you wish to use the maximum available size for a Primary DOS Partition (Y/N)..............................................................................? [Y]

Enter choice: [1]

Press Esc to return to FDISK Options

Press Esc to return to FDISK Options.

The next screen will ask you how big you want the primary dos partition to be. For our example purpose we want 3 equally sized partitions on a 30 GB hard drive so 10 GB each. 10 GB in Megabytes equals 10 x 1024 which is 10,240 Mb. Remember that 1,024 Mb makes up 1 GB.

The size of the partition, in this case the primary partition, can be entered as a percentage or amount in Mb. I like to work with Mb myself.

Create Primary DOS Partition

Current fixed disk drive: 1

Total disk space is 30720 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes) Maximum space available for partition is 30720 Mbytes (100%)

Enter partition size in Mbytes or percent of disk space (%) to Create a Primary DOS Partition.............................: [10240]

Press Esc to return to FDISK Options

Type 10240 and press enter. Press Esc to return to FDISK Options

After each time you set a new partition FDISK may verify the space by checking it. This may take anywhere from a minute or two to several minutes depending on the size of the partition you just set.

Once it is done you can hit ESC until you return to the main menu. Next we'll tackle the extended DOS partition and logical drives.

FDISK and the extended and logical drives

The Extended DOS Partition.

Choose 1. Create DOS partition or Logical Dos Drive.

Microsoft Windows 98 Fixed Disk Setup Program © Copyright Microsoft Corp. 1983-1998

FDISK Options

Current fixed disk drive: 1 Choose one of the following:

1. 2 3 4 Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive Set active partition Delete partition or Logical DOS Drive Display partition information

Enter choice: [1]

Press Esc to exit FDISK

Choose 2 Create Extended Dos Partition

Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive

Current fixed disk drive: 1 Choose one of the following:

1. 2 3 Create Primary DOS partition Create Extended DOS Partition Create Logical DOS Drive(s) in the Extended DOS Partition

Enter choice: [1]

Press Esc to return to FDISK Options

Then you will be presented with a screen like below. The maximum allowable space for the extended dos partition will already be entered in the space ready for you to confirm by pressing enter. We want the maximum allowable space for the extended partition to hold the D and E drive. If it were to be made smaller then hard drive space would be wasted as it would be left inaccessible.

Create Extended DOS Partition

Current fixed disk drive: 1

Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage C: 1 PRI DOS 10240 UNKNOWN 33%

Total disk space is 30720 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes) Maximum space available for partition is 20480 Mbytes (66%)

Enter partition size in Mbytes or percent of disk space (%) to create an Extended DOS Partition........................................: [20480]

Press Esc to return to FDISK Options

Press ENTER and FDISK will verify the Extended DOS Partition. After the extended dos partition is verified you will be returned to a screen like this.
Create an Extended DOS Partition.........................: [20480]

Create Extended DOS Partition

Current fixed disk drive: 1

Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage C: 1 PRI DOS 10240 UNKNOWN 33% 2 EXT DOS 20480 UNKNOWN 66%

Extended DOS Partition created.

Press Esc to continue

Logical Drives.

Press escape and FDISK will present a screen telling us that there are no logical drives defined. Entering logical drive is just like we did for the primary and extended DOS partitions. At the main menu choose 1. Create DOS partition or logical DOS Drive. Then choose 3. Create Logical DOS Drive(s) in the Extended DOS Partition. By default FDISK will set up for the maximum allowable space for a logical drive. Pressing enter would commit this choice and eventually give you just a C and D drive. In the example of our 30 GB hard drive that would mean a 10 GB C: drive and a 20 GB D: drive.

But we don't want that. We want C, D and E drives of 10 GB each. So if C has already been created as the primary dos partition and we have created the extended dos partition bed for the logical drives then we are now creating the first logical drive next to C: which would be D: Enter the size in Mb or %. This is why I like planning my partitions on paper and in Mb's. I would enter a Mb size here of 10,240.

BUT

It may get a bit confusing trying to do it by percentage. At first a c drive was created based on the entire hard drive size. A 10 GB C: partition would be 1/3 of a 30 GB hard drive or 33%. Therefore you may assume that the next partition would be 33% again and so on. BUT you are now doing a percentage of the extended partition which is 2/3 of the 30 GB hard drive. Since we are using 3 equal sized partitions that go well mathematically into 30 GB it's easy to figure out that the D partition would be half of the total 20 GB extended partition or 50%.

So you can see why I prefer using Mb over % for setting my partitions. It just keeps things straight in my head and on the paper I planned all this out on.

After you enter 10,240 and press enter FDISK will verify the space and return you back to the same screen to continue to set new logical partitions until the remaining space in the extended partition is gone. In our example we are only setting 3 drives of C, D and E and we have already set up C and D. Since FDISK will always default to the maximum allowable space and that this is the final logical drive you can simply press enter to commit the remaining space to E.

After pressing enter and the drive verifying you have completed the initial set up of the hard drive. Keep pressing ESC until you exit the FDISK utility. Remove the floppy disk and reboot your computer to confirm the partitions on the hard drive. The computer will produce and error saying that there is no valid boot disk or missing boot files. That is ok. Once that is done you have a few options.

1) Insert the Win98 boot disk and format the C, D and E drives one at a time using the format [drive:] command.

2) Insert the Win98 boot disk and boot using CD Rom support and begin installing the OS choosing to format the C drive during the installation process. Once the OS is installed and running you can then format the remaining drives through MY COMPUTER by right clicking on the drive and choosing format.

3) Boot off the four bootable floppies for Win2K and format during the installation process and through MY COMPUTER or the administration tool disk management afterwards.

4) Boot off the WinXP CD Rom and format the C: drive during the installation process and format the remaining drives through MY COMPUTER or the administration tool disk management.

But there you have it. That's the basics on how to use FDISK to set up a new or used partition. It's pretty simple. If you are setting up a brand new drive then you start at the beginning with the primary DOS partition and work you way to the last logical drive. If you are deleting FAT 16 or 32 partitions then you work backwards deleting from the last logical partition to the primary dos partition.

If you feel you have "messed up" during any of the set up phase then you can always backtrack by deleting the partitions you've set up and then re-entering them.

NTFS, FAT32, flames and tweaks

NTFS or FAT32?

Choosing NTFS or FAT is up to you. There are extra commands for setting NTFS switches and cluster sizes during FDISK. In order to simplify life for myself if I chose NTFS as my file system then I would format NTFS for the C: drive during the OS installation process. After the OS was up and on-line I would then format the remaining drives NTFS setting the cluster size as well from the appropriate pull down menus.

These can all be accessed and set when you right click on any drive and choose format.

Before any of you start hounding my backside screaming "why didn't you suggest Partition Magic or Partition Commander?" Well for one they are not free programs and for two the best way to set up a hard disk is at the base level to ensure that drive stability is maintained.

I am not invalidating the usefulness of these programs but, in my humble opinion, only suggesting that FDISK route is widely accepted as the best route to initially set-up a hard drive.

A few tweaks to make you happy.

Tweaks are done at your own risk. Always have a current backup before you adjust any system properties or change the registry.

1. Move the page file/virtual memory to a partition by itself as I suggested setting the minimum and maximum size to be the same. There are several sites on the internet that can instruct you on moving and tweaking the page file/virtual memory.
   
2. Move the temporary internet files folder to its own partition or a partition you designated for temporary files. Open Internet Explorer and choose Tools. Click on the General Tab and choose settings. At this time it may be wise to trim down the amount of disk space used as well. I keep mine at 30 Mb. After that choose MOVE FOLDER and click on the drive you want to move the folder to. Click OK and the system will log you off and then on to complete the move.
   
3. WinXP tweak. If you don't use hibernate turn it off. Accessed through the display properties dialog box on the screen saver tab when you click POWER and choose the Hibernate tab. Uncheck the box for ENABLE HIBERNATE. By default hibernate reserves a space in the OS drive equal to the amount of ram in our computer.
   
4. Install programs to a separate partition.
   
5. Install games to a separate partition.
   
6. Move the temp and tmp files to another partition.

WinXP/2K

• Right click my Computer.
• Click Properties.
• Click on Advanced Tab
• Click environment.
• Click the TEMP variable under System Variables and modify it to your new location.
• Click the TMP variable under System Variables and modify it to your new location.
• Reboot.
  

Win9x

• Edit the autoexec.bat
• Add the following lines:
• Set TMPDIR=drive:temp
• Set TEMPDIR=drive:temp
• Reboot.
  

Conclusion

These basic building blocks will help keep your drives in good shape and aid in reducing the maintenance time. Since programs, the operating system, temporary internet files, games and regular data aren't continually "bumping elbows" with each other the hard drive playing field is less torn up. Fragmentation is reduced thus boosting performance.

In closing I would like you to take these hints and steps and re-apply them to your particular needs and situation. There is no hard and fast rule that says to do it this way or that way as far as how big or how many partitions you should have.

There is just one rule that you should have the confidence and ability to do it yourself and set up a hard drive for what suits your own needs.

Finally this guide was conceived to answer some basic questions that have arisen in our forums. This is not the definitive guide and is always open for improvement. There are many other extensive guides available on the Internet to embellish what has aleady been written.