![]() ![]() Create DOS partition or logical DOS drive.The reference to "Current fixed disk drive" is the actual hard drive that you wish to partition.The following are the menu options presented by FDISK (and an explanation of each). If you are setting up a dual-boot system, select NO. When you first run FDISK, it may ask you if you want to enable large disk support. The "Primary" partition must also be set to active, otherwise the BIOS (ROM program that starts when you turn the computer on) will ignore it. The " Primary" partition is the one used to boot the machine, so you should format it to a file system that can be read by the various OS's. ALL data is lost. (You should completely backup all existing data first!) FDISK will only allow you to create up to four partitions - one primary and three extended. The DOS FDISK.EXE is a partitioning tool that you use to completely wipe away existing partitions and then create new partitions. Partition Magic allows you to shrink or expand partitions and also provides conversion utilities for converting FAT drives. Because it is NOT freeware, you will have to pay for it. Partition Magic is a shareware tool available from PowerQuest Corporation. In this way you can have a FAT16 partition, a NTFS partition, and a UNIX partition all on the same hard drive. The other reason for partitioning your hard drive is so that you can assign different file systems to different partitions. If you have a 3MB file, it will also require 2 clusters however, you waste 1MB of space. If you save a 4MB file, it will require 2 clusters (2MB + 2MB). For example, assume you have a cluster size of 2MB. Larger clusters lead to wasting space when storing small files. The two main reasons for partitioning your hard drive are to increase disk efficiency, particularly with FAT16 file systems, since FAT assigns cluster size based on disk size, (larger disk size, larger cluster size). See MS knowledge base article Q197667 for steps on using the updated ATAPI driver in the NT install process.) Why Partition? The original MS generic IDE driver in the NT installation does not supprt large drives. (If you have am older system and a hard drive that is 8 GB or larger then you may need to use the updated MS ATAPI.SYS driver found in NT service pack 4. If you have Windows 98 and a hard drive greater than 2GB, you will need to partition your hard drive since Windows 98 (FAT16 in general) does not support partitions greater than 2GB. However, you should also remember that your floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, and removable storage drives (ZIP drive, etc.) will also require a drive letter. Therefore you can only max out at 26 partitions, (26 letters in the alphabet). Each section is then assigned a separate logical drive letter. Partitioning is the act of dividing your physical disk drive into segments. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
February 2023
Categories |