PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: Simon on January 10, 2003, 07:37
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Fdisk(ing?) has been mentioned quite a bit on here, but I have to admit to never having done it, and it is often assumed that everyone knows how to do it.
A step by step guide to Fdisking would be handy, if someone could take the time, or point in the direction of an easy to follow website?
Thanks!
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A straight forward guide is available here Simon :
http://www.compguystechweb.com/troubleshooting/fdisk/fdisk_run.html
On the same site is a page showing the various displayed screens and explaining the options.
Fdisk can also be used to tell you how your drive/s are partitioned,which are FAT32 or FAT 16 for example and the size of each partition used.
Hope this helps :-*
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Thanks for that, Sandra. It may also be of help to other people.
I assume that Fdisk does not apply to XP, as usually you just pop the disc in the CDROM, and it boots from there.
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I think XP does its own partitioning as it installs as it doesnt recognise DOS commands as far as I know,maybe someone with XP can confirm this :-*
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Although I haven't used XP yet ;) I understand on Set Up, it does allow partitioning of the HD.
As you know XP uses NTFS format as opposed to FAT32.
XP also doesn't work ontop of DOS as in other versions of Windows, and DOS has been omitted from the application :'( :'( boohoo I like DOS ;D
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Well, as you know, I have XP, and yes, it does offer to partition during installation.
I don't know anything about DOS, but you can run a Command prompt in XP, and a DOS type screen pops up, but I've never done anything with it.
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The command prompt works with all the old DOS programs that I've tried. In fact, the DOS emulator in XP is quite a lot better than the one in Windows 2000 which broke quite a few old DOS programs :(
XP allows you to partition your hard drives at install time, plus it also allows full partition editing from the Control Panel's Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Disk Management section.
Well at least it does in XP Pro - I'm not sure about Home. I assume it is the same ;)
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Yes it does - I just checked! :D
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LOL. Thanks Simon ;)
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A straight forward guide is available here Simon :
http://www.compguystechweb.com/troubleshooting/fdisk/fdisk_run.html
Very interesting site that Sandra. I always thought F/disk in dos meant formatting the disk completely. I have dabbled a little bit in dos and know how to move things around etc but I shy away from deleting anything in dos incase I create a disaster as once done cannot be undone. Curiosity-- What is the advantage of partitioning your disk? :-";"xx
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I think you said you had a 40 gig drive Lona,so some people would create an extra partition and have about 4 or 5 gig as your primary partition to have your operating system on and the rest for your data and things youd rather not lose.That way if you have a problem with your ME you could wipe the primary partition and reinstall ME again and you would still have the rest of the drive intact.You would still have to reinstall your prgrammes as the OS wouldnt be able to find them,but any music ,letters and other data would still be on your drive.
Another reason is if you want to Dual Boot into another OS then you would create another partition to have that OS on so you would end up having 3 partitions on your drive (if you didnt have a second hard drive installed) :-*
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So let me understand this Sandra. If I had my operating system on one partition would I still be able to access my other partition as normal. I can't get my head round this one :-";"xx
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On a PC with only one hard drive it has to have a partition (silly name but thats what it is).You can have this as the full size of the drive as one partition.This then becomes drive C.If you do this and need to reinstall your operating system then you have to format before you can reinstall,formatting then wipes everything off your drive and you lose anything that you have not backed up onto CD or in some other way.
If you create a second partition your OS goes on C and the second partition is called D,this moves your CD rom to E and a writer if you have one to F.
If you have a second hard drive installed it would be more sensible to use your smallest drive as the primary master and just have the OS on that which will be your C drive.The second hard drive can be partitioned if you wanted or left as one partition of the full size of the drive.
Be aware that if you have two hard drives and create two partitions on each drive that C will be the first partition on your master drive and D will be the first partion on your slave,E will be the second partion on your master and F will be the second partition on your slave.I found this out to my cost by wiping D after carefully transferring everything from E to D thinking I was ending up with everything on my master drives second partition ???
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So let me understand this Sandra. If I had my operating system on one partition would I still be able to access my other partition as normal. I can't get my head round this one :-
In addition to what I have just written Lona,when you click on My Computer you would have A drive(floppy),C drive (Primary partition),D drive (Secondary partition),E (CD rom),and F (CD writer).Along with Printers,Control Panel and Dial Up Networking etc as you do now,assuming you just had the hard drive as two partitions.
You access D in the same way as you access C or A or your CD rom now.When you download anything you just have to make sure you tell it to download to D (whichever folder you want) instead of C so as you can keep it all neat and tidy.I download to D/programs or D/music and such like but that is down to your own personal preferences and way of working.
I hope that this has clarified things for you :-*
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I'm with you, Lona! ??? ??? :-[
Sandra, (or anyone), do you have to have an OS on a second HD, or can it just be used for storage if it's a small drive?
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You don't have to have a second drive or partition, but its safer for data to be on/in its own partition, that way if you need to wipe the OS off, and I always suggest reinstalling an OS on a wiped partition/HD, your data wont be affected :)
I could suggest other things that would speed up your system if you have two HDs, but I'll save that for another day
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Actually, I probably didn't word the question very well - what I meant was, if you have a second HD, do you have to have an OS on it for it to work, or can you just use it for data storage, such as games etc, and access it from your primary Windows set up?
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Actually, I probably didn't word the question very well - what I meant was, if you have a second HD, do you have to have an OS on it for it to work, or can you just use it for data storage, such as games etc, and access it from your primary Windows set up?
No the other HD will be a slave of the master, look you have other drives on your PC, such as the Floppy, CD-Rom's etc, all controlled by the OS on C drive, it will be just another addition.
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...if you have a second HD, do you have to have an OS on it for it to work, or can you just use it for data storage, such as games etc, and access it from your primary Windows set up?
You only need an O/S on the drive from which you boot, Simon. As long as the 2nd drive is correctly formatted, and jumpered as a slave, it will be recognised as another storage device by your O/S.
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simon i run my second drive purely as a data storage device, no os on it. as rodders says as long as its correctly jumpered as the slave there should be no problems.
:)
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I think this is the definitive guide to Fdisk from the horses mouth as it were ;)
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q255867#5 (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q255867#5)
Would it be a good idea to add it to the Pals guide at the bottom of the main page Adept,as it seems to have quite a few people confused :-*
/me enabled url[/size]
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Thanks for that, Sandra. In return I've made the link work for you. :-*
I think I get the gist of it now. They key seems to be getting the jumper switched correctly so drive#2 operates as a slave.
Thanks to all concerned - it's easy when you know how! ;) ;D
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I think I understand it all now. After you have partitioned your disk, I take it you manually transfer all your data you want to store onto the slave drive. Apart from saving your files onto the slave drive are there any other advantages in partitioning your disk?. ???
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I think I understand it all now. After you have partitioned your disk, I take it you manually transfer all your data you want to store onto the slave drive. Apart from saving your files onto the slave drive are there any other advantages in partitioning your disk?. ???
We are still not quite there Lona ;)
If you only have the one hard drive and you partition it with Fdisk then you lose all data on the total drive.
If you have a second hard drive installed as a slave to the master then you can transfer data from your master drive to it and then if you wipe your master drive the data on your second drive is safe.
However once you have multiple partitions ,be it on one drive or two drives, you can wipe a partition after transferring your data to another partition on any partition of any drive.
You can use a program such as Partition Magic (I think you may have that already somewhere ;) ) to create new partitions on a drive without losing data (I think) but not with Fdisk :-*
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So what you mean is I would have to copy all my data onto cd before partitioning. Would my operating system still remain or would I have to reinstall windows?
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Afraid so Lona as all data including your OS would be lost when partitioning with Fdisk.The time to do it is when you need to reinstall your OS for some reason or if you add an extra hard drive to increase your capacity.
The only other way is to use something like Partition Magic to partition an existing in use drive without losing stuff but I will leave that for someone who is more conversant with it to explain that one :-*
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Partition Magic is relatively straightforward to use
Which version do you have?
When you use it, and you want another partition, you simply click on the 'create partition' bit, and follow the questions. You don't want to make the partition a bootable one, you want to make it FAT32, and you should generally pick a partition to follow (the recommended option). You then have to decide upon the size of partition you want. It will give you a size generally half of the size of the space available. You can change this by typing in the size in Mb ie. 3gig is 3000 in the box
Now this is where the previous advice comes into play.
I recommend that you have the OS and all programs in one partition.... the reason for this is that if you have to reinstall your operating system, you will have to reinstall all your programs too. So it makes sense to wipe them all from your HD and start with a nice clean surface, without any remenant files.
This means your partition can be used purely for data etc, It does however mean you need to be careful when using applications to ensure you redirect the saved files to this new partition and not just rely upon the default locations.
If you need more assistance, just ask :-*
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One question ::)Where do I get Partition Magic :D
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I've only ONE word to answer you're qusetion LONA . :o
SANDRA ;D
Cheers !
Scrumpy Jack :)
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There is just no end to this woman's expertise.
Sandra is MAGIC ;)
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Of course you will have to pay for it ;) :)