Build Your Own PC
Prepare the Hard DriveMay 31, 1999
By David Risley
In order to use your hard drive, it must be partitioned and formatted.
There are some considerations here. If you are using Windows 95 OSR2, then you can partition using the FAT32 file system. This will allow smaller clusters, saving disk space due to slack, and will allow massive partition sizes. With any other version of Windows, you will have to use FAT16, which uses 32 KB clusters and limits partition sizes to 2 GB.
To find what version you are using, type ver at the command prompt. It will return a version number. It it says 4.00.1111, you are using OSR2. Any other, and you are not.
Take a little time to plan your partitions. Do you want one large partition for the entire drive? Or do you want to separate it into different drive volumes? If you have FAT32, it is very popular to create one partition for the entire drive. Otherwise, if you are using a drive larger than 2 GB, you will have to separate it into more than one partition.
At this point, partition the drive. Type
fdiskat the command prompt. Follow the instructions on the section on partitioning. If you have FAT32 and wish to use it, enter Y when asked if you want to use "Large Disk Support".
After the drive has been partitioned, reboot the machine with the system disk in Drive A. You may get an error about Invalid Media Type. Don't worry about it.
Now you must format the new C Drive. At the A:< prompt, type format c: /s. The /s tells it to make the disk bootable. You will get a warning saying that this action will erase all data on the drive. This is normal, and since there is no data on the drive, just press "Y" and move on. It will show the status as it happens.
If you created additional partitions on this drive, format those volumes now. Type format d: or format e:, where the letter corresponds to the volume you wish to format. Do not type the /s since you only want the C Drive bootable.
Now remove the system disk and reboot. It is supposed to boot normally and up at the C:< prompt. If you get an error like No boot device found or No ROM Basic, you probably forgot to make the primary partition active. Run fdisk again and fix that. If you get an error like No Operating System, you probably forgot to make the disk bootable. Make sure you typed /s at the format command.
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