FDISK Page:
Warning, Information (NOT) A Suggestion:
Caution, If you use FDISK to repartition your hard disk, all files will be deleted. Be sure to back-up all files. If your disk has been partitioned by other programs, SpeedStor, Everex, etc contact them, do not carry out the FDISK procedure. Make a BOOT disk. You can make one from the Add/Remove programs in Control/Panel or your windows-95 disk, add your CD driver and MSCDEX.exe to the floppy and check your config & autoexec to make sure all commands are pointing in the right direction--also, please test it to make sure it sees your CD drive.
The Short Article:
This is going to take awhile depending on your past experience. First, make a Boot disk and make sure you have your CD driver on the disk (if you need help--E-Mail me). Second, back-up all files and app's. that you want to re-install. Remember deleting partitions and formatting destroys everything, partition size means cluster size and windows assigns the drive letters when you re-boot. Sounds simple doesn't it, WRONG. Better check out the long version if your really going to attempt this.
NOTE: if your doing FDISK because of a bad sector due to a virus or other reason:Some times the first FDISK operation doesn't fix this, try it again and if you or someone else hasn't played around in your CMOS changing heads, sectors and etc., also it's not recommended if your running a disk management utility---then you can use the switch without loosing data : (FDISK /mbr) --- this will make a new boot record.
If FDISK/mbr doesn't fix it--forget it:
Use ScanDisk for bad sectors/blocks. It is performing a LOW LEVEL FORMAT on the track where bad sector is encountered to mark that sector as a bad. It could cause damage on user data, even if scanning itself is non-destructive (also on MFM, RLL disks). Therefore, DON'T USE this option to on AT-Bus (IDE), SCSI or ESDI drives. These drives store the bad block data themselves, so you don't have to tell them or scan the media!
Recommendation: use a media analysis program provided by an utility package from your hard drive manufacturer or forget it.
The partition sector [Master Boot Record or MBR] is the first sector on the hard disk. It is made up of partition executable code, error messages ['Invalid partition table Error loading operating system Missing operating system'] and the partition table.
When the PC is booted normally, and control is passed to the partition sector, the executable code in this sector is executed automatically. It's job is to check the partition table, to ensure that it is present and that it contains valid data. [The partition table contains information on the number of sectors on the disk, the number of partitions into which the disk is divided and the location of the boot sector for the active partition.] If the data in the partition table is valid, control then passes to the boot sector. If the partition table is missing, or if it contains invalid data, an error message is displayed.
FDISK /MBR [the /MBR parameter is available in MS-DOS 5.x onwards] replaces the partition executable code, without changing the partition data. Since most partition sector viruses replace [or modify] the partition executable code, leaving the partition table unchanged, FDISK /MBR is often considered to be an easy way of removing partition sector viruses.
OK, That aside--this Is the True Complex Article:
FDISK only sees only 504MB of the disk! Err do you have an Enhanced BIOS? If you do have an EBIOS, make sure you have enabled translation: usually, either 'Large' or 'LBA'. If you see no such options in your BIOS setup, remember that some types of BIOS offer them only when you tell it to autodetect the drives.
Last but not least, remove all old partitions before trying to create new ones after changing the translation mode.FDISK will partition only 2GB, there's nothing wrong; this is a limitation of the DOS FAT and Win95 VFAT filesystems. You will have to create multiple partitions in order to use the full drive size. This limitation has been addressed in Microsoft's new FAT32 file system, currently only available in the Win95 OEM 2 release. It allows giant multi-gigabyte partitions.
Please remember:
You have to delete ALL partitions (if there is any) and then Create one "primary DOS partition" and set it (active) then one "extended DOS partition" and then you create "logical drives" on the extended DOS partition. So if you're trying to partition your only hard disk into C:, D:, and E:, you'll create a primary DOS partition which will automatically be C: when you re-boot, then an extended DOS partition, then logical drives D: and E: and etc. on the extended partition. This is the basic scenario. Then you Exit from FDISK, then "FORMAT C: /S" to make the hard disk bootable again. Then "FORMAT D:", "FORMAT E:", and so on for each of the logical drives. Don't use "/S" with D: or any of the later drives because you don't want to make them bootable. Remember, one primary DOS active partition---OK.
NOW, ( hopefully ) you've been using your Windows-95 emergency start-up 3.5 disk, of which has a copy of FDISK and the other Utilities.
Ok, cram it into drive A and let's go. re-start your computer by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL, at the command prompt, type FDISK, when the screen arrives, you can choose from 4 (or 5 if you have more than 1 H/D). NOTE: You must delete partitions in the following order:
(1) any non-DOS partition.
(2) any logical drives in the extended DOS partition.
(3) Any extended DOS partition.
(4) The existing primary DOS partition---OK. (1) on the screen,
press 3, and then enter. The delete DOS partition or Logical DOS drive screen comes up. (2) Press the number for the kind of partition you want to delete and press enter. (3) Follow the directions on the screen and repeat the steps for deleting any additional logical drives or partitions.
NOTE: If FDISK can't delete a non- partition, QUIT and do it with there software that made the partition and then return to FDISK because (again) you have to delete all partitions.
NOW we have to create a primary DOS partition.
(1) On screen press 1 then enter, on screen, press 1 the create primary DOS partition appears.
(2) (if you want max, press enter) if not, press N and then enter and then specify the partition size as a percentage of disk space in MB of disk space or press Esc to return to FDISK screen.
(3) Follow instructions to make the primary DOS partition active, then return to options screen.
(4) If you hadn't allocated all of the space to the primary, you can create a extended DOS partition and logical drives by choosing that option in FDISK and specify again the size (if not) press Esc to quit FDISK.
(5) Then insert your start-up disc and press any key to continue. Windows-95 set-up will not install unless formatted, so with the w-95 start-up disk in drive A type the following (format c:/s) if that's your drive and this will copy system files--when the warning appears, proceed by pressing Y and enter--when done, type a label and press enter. To review the FORMAT page or continue.
NOTE: to format other drives--repeat these steps, NO more drives or partitions then,
Press ESC to get out of FDISK --pull floppy and re-start
computer with CTRL+ALT+DEL or re-boot by what ever means.NOW, if you've done your homework and have your floppy loaded with your CD driver so you can see your CD by typing your drive (D:\ dir) and see Setup or install---depending on what OS your installing. Run setup to install Windows-95 then your programs--Done.
NOTE: (If you have any removable media drives present, e-mail me because it's getting into FAT header and BIOS parameter blocks, however w-95 will create partitions on INT 13 based removable media, but there is a lot of controls). After all this, windows-95 will not let you size your clusters, so= (basically we're screwed) unless your lucky and have the new w-95b--then you already have 4k clusters and there's NOTHING to do but maintenance.
So, if there are two physical hard drives each
divided into 3 logical
partitions the order of assigned drive letters will be the following:
C: primary partition on drive 1
D: primary partition on drive 2
E: first logical drive in the extended partition of drive 1
F: second logical drive in the extended partition of drive 1
G: first logical drive in the extended partition of drive 2
H: second logical drive in the extended partition of drive 2
Note: the second physical hard disk does not need to have a primary partition. If the second hard disk only contains logical drives in the extended partition, the drive letters will be assigned as follows:
C: primary partition on drive 1
D: first logical drive in the extended partition of drive 1
E: second logical drive in the extended partition of drive 1
F: first logical drive in the extended partition of drive 2
G: second logical drive in the extended partition of drive 2
H: third logical drive in the extended partition of drive 2
I: will be your CD drive
Drive Letter's Assignment:
OK, You have an IDE hard disk divided into a Primary DOS Partition (C:) and a logical volume (D:). You then go to (Somewhere) and buy a second IDE drive, install it in the machine, and creates another Primary DOS Partition and another logical volume.
After rebooting, the Primary DOS Partition on the new disk has become D: while the old logical volume has changed to the E: drive. The DOS and OS/2 algorithm assigns letters first to all the Primary Partitions on all the disks. This will, in general, mess up all the disk letters stored in INI files and other configuration data. To avoid trouble, the second drive should be configured with no Primary Partition. It should only have an Extended Partition with two logical volumes. Then the old drive will continue to have drive letters C: and D: and the new disk will get letters E: and F: as was probably intended. Does this explain it??
Changing Drive letters:
Right click on My Computer and select properties. This will bring up the System properties window. Select the device manager tab at the top. Find the CD-ROM device and double click on it. A property sheet should open and let you set the range of letters available for the drive. Just put in the desired letter.
SO--you want more DOS switches and things??
Configure a hard disk for use with MS-DOS.
FDISK [/STATUS] /X
/STATUS Displays partition information.
/X Ignores extended disk-access support. Use this switch if you
receive disk access or stack overflow messages.Undocumented FDISK commands:
FDISK 1/PRI:100 - Command line to create a 100 meg DOS partition on hard drive 1.
FDISK 1/EXT:500 - Command line to create a 500 meg extended DOS partition on hard drive 1.
FDISK 1/LOG:250 - Command line to create a 250 logical drives.
FDISK /PARTN - Saves the partition to a file called PARTSAV.FIL
FDISK /Q - Unknown
FDISK /STATUS - Shows you the current status of your hard drives.
WHAT IS IT: Allows you to delete and recreate and organize your hard drive's partition's
EXAMPLES:
Fdisk = This would get you into the fdisk option screen, also keep in mind when deleting a partitions ANYTHING that is on that partition of the hard drive will be ERASED, also once the partition is delete it will not be redetected until you format that partition, so if you delete your primary partion which is the c: drive you will not be able to put anything on that drive or even read from that drive until it is formatted.How Many Different FDISK's are there??
FDISK Version History:
MS-DOS 2.x - First DOS version to support hard drives.
Maximum partition size - 16MB.
MS-DOS 3.2 - Maximum partition size - 32MB
No extended partitions supported.
MS-DOS 3.3 - Maximum partition size - 32MB
First DOS version to allow extended DOS partitions.
Maximum number of partitions - 24 (C: through Z:)
MS-DOS 4.x - Maximum partition size - 2.1GB
Maximum number of partitions - 24
MS-DOS 5.x - Same as DOS 4, but now handles up to 8 physical drives
MS-DOS 6.x - Same as DOS 5
Windows95 - (MS-DOS 7) Basically the same as DOS 4/5/6 but adds 2
new partition types - 0E and 0F - which will be seen as
NON-DOS partitions by earlier DOS versions. Type 0E is
used for a Primary partition if INT13 Extension support
is present in the BIOS. Type 0F is used for an Extended
partition if INT13 Extension support is present.
WIN95B(OSR2) Adds support for FAT32.
Adds 2 more new partition types - 0B and 0C.
0B is used for a FAT32 partition. 0C is used for a
FAT32 partition if INT13 Extension support is present.
Type B and C partitions are seen as NON-DOS partitions
by earlier DOS versions (including WIN95/WIN95A).
