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All About Partitioning

How to Partition

May 29, 1999
By David Risley

The first partition is your primary DOS partition. This is your C: drive and can't be divided. This is also called the active partition. You can only have one active partition.

The second partition is optional. It is called an extended partition. This is the space left over after the primary partition. Each extended partition must be labeled with a letter D: through Z:.

To start this, type "fdisk" at the A: prompt. If this doesn't work, it is because your drive is not installed correctly.

First, you have to setup a primary DOS partition. Choose Option 1 (Create DOS partition or Logical DOS drive). Choose Option 1 in the next menu. Now you can make your entire or only part of the C: drive the primary partition. Many people make the entire drive one partition just to stay simple. If you don't want to do so, specify the amount of drive space you want to partition in either megabytes or percentage of total drive. If you are using a percentage, be sure to follow the number by a "%" or the computer will think you're talking MBs.

Next, you'll need to make this partition active. Return to the main FDISK menu and choose Option 2 (Set Active Partition). Follow the prompts.

If you're going to create an extended partition, choose Option 1 again, but this time choose Option 2 in the next menu (Create Extended DOS partition). Plug in the percentage of drive to partition for this one. Do not make this partition active. Only one can be active.

After you create an extended partition, you will be given the Create Logical Drives option in the extended partition menu. Follow the on-screen instructions to assign drive letters to your partitions D: through Z:. Keep in mind that D: is often used for the CD-ROM.

After all this is done, you can choose Option 4 (Display Partition Information) and check your work.

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