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 href="http://www.bootdisk.com/"
target=_blank>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 target=_blank> 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 href="ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt31/i386/reskit.exe">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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Choose 2 Create Extended Dos Partition

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.

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]

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.
  
  

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.