Preparing a Hard Drive

Step 2 - Using FDISK - Option 1. Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive

Option 1 - Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive

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

Select the option that you require and press <ENTER>
*Note You cannot allocate an Extended partition unless a Primary partition has already been created previously.

Attention! - FDISK relies on the BIOS settings for each drive being correct in the BIOS. Therefore if your BIOS reports a 2Gb drive then that is the maximum amount of space FDISK will allocate! It's worth checking your BIOS before you start using FDISK just to make sure that your drive is correctly reported.

You will then be asked if you want to use all or some of the available space on your drive for the partition type you have chosen. You can specify the amount of space in Megabytes that you want the partition to use if you do not choose to allocate all of the space on your drive to one partition.

After completing this step you will be prompted to reboot your system with your startup disk in the floppy drive so that you can immediately format your new partitions.

Create Primary DOS Partition

Provided there is no existing Primary DOS partition, you will see the screen above, asking you to decide if you want to use all available space on the drive for the partition.
If you select 'Yes', FDISK will go ahead and allocate all the available space on the drive to the new Primary partition and set it as the 'Active' (Bootable) partition.
If you select 'No', FDISK will prompt you to enter how much of the available space you want to use (See below).

If you choose to create a Primary partition and one already exists, FDISK will not create another. You will be presented with the following screen.