Hard Disk Drive Setup - Partition and Format

This procedure explains how to setup a new hard disk. Warning - if you are setting up a hard disk which contains data, the following procedure would completely erase your hard disk and the data would be unrecoverable.

Before a new hard disk can be used it needs to be setup. This involves partitioning and formatting the hard disk. Windows 98 or ME boot disk contains the required software to perform this procedure. FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM are the files required in your bootable floppy disk. Start the partition and format procedure by booting your PC using a Windows boot disk. Make sure you set the BIOS so that the boot sequence is set to detect the floppy disk first. If your system has no problems booting you will be presented with a Windows boot disk menu. This gives you the option to start the system with or without CD-ROM support. At this stage you do not need the CD-ROM support, so choose the option to boot without CD-ROM support. You should end up in the MS DOS prompt A: (A drive). From A: command prompt type fdisk. You will be presented with following message:

Choose "Y" to enable large disk support.You will now be presented with the FDISK main menu as shown below.

From the menu, choose option 1 - Create DOS partition or Logical DOS drive. Another menu will present the following options.

Choose option 1 - Create primary DOS Partition. FDISK verifies the integrity of your drive and will ask you if want to use the maximum available size of your hard disk to create the primary partition and set it active. To keep things simple we will create one large partition. Choose "Y" to use maximum available space. When the partition has been created successfully you will be notified by the system. Your drive is now known as C: (C drive). Press "Esc" to return to the menu. Press "Esc" again to exit FDISK. You need to restart your system for the changes to take affect. Leave boot disk in the drive.When the system reboots, choose start without CD-ROM from the boot disk menu. While booting from floppy disk you might get error message like "Invalid media type reading drive C" this is OK for this stage as the hard disk is not formatted.

From A: command prompt type format c:You will get a message saying "WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST. Proceed with Format (Y/N)?".

Don't worry about the message as you do not have any data in the new hard disk. Choose "Y". The format will proceed and would show you a progress indicator. The time it takes to format a hard disk depends on the size and speed of the drive. This could be around 5-30 minutes. Once the format is complete you need to reset your system. You are now ready to install an operating system.

By the time using your computer, you might have wished to partition your hard drive. Perhaps, the reason might be to dual boot or secure some separate partition for backing up old or important data. You might be guessing that I would suggest you to download some tools. But it’s not like that, I am not going to suggest you those old tricks that says to back-up your data and place it in separate storage device and partition it again and again it to one of your partition.





In Windows 7, there is simple way to do it. Today in this tutorial, I’ll be guiding you through the each and every steps with screenshots.


Before starting note that,


- We can partition any drive, even a system drive


- We can do it only in Windows, Windows 7 and Vista specifically


So let’s divide it.


Go to Start > Right click on My Computer and choose Manage.





Disk Management Window will Pop-up, it may take time to load it since it fetches for all the hardware and system information in your PC. After it’s fully loaded, go to Storage> Diskmanagement at the left sidebar. This is where we’ll have all the information about storage devices that are in our PC currently connected and active.





At the right column all the storage media will be listed with their basic information like File system type, and status. Now choose the Volume that you want to partition. Right Click on it and selectShrink Volume option from menu.





As soon as you click on the Shrink Volume option, system will search for available space in your selected Disk Volume.





This will not take much longer than few seconds. After querying, Shrink window will pop-up. This is where you’ll have to specify the Volume for next partition.


Look at the total size of available shrink space. Below it, you’ll have to Enter the space to shrink.





You must make sure that the size is not below the total size of space taken by files in that drive.


You can check the used space by right clicking on the drive you are going to partition and chooseProperties.





Click on Shrink button after specifying the size to shrink. The shrink size is for the value for the partition where your old files will be contained and remaining size will allocated for your next partition.





But you’ll still not able to access this new drive. You’ll have to format it and specify the drive letter to access them. To do so, continue reading.


Right click on unallocated drive and choose New Simple Volume option.





New Simple Volume Wizard Window will popup.





Click on Next button to continue.


In next window, you’ll have to specify the size for your new volume. Set full size if you are satisfied with two partitions; else divide it again for new partition.





Next choose any drive letter from the available list and click on Next button.





In next window, leave everything as default but make sure it’s similar to the screen below:





Click on Finish window to complete the wizard.


If you’ve autoplay enabled in your computer, then New Volume will be auto played for the first and last time.





Go to my Computer to see your new drive ready.





With similar method you can also format your empty drive to create multiple partitions.


Hope you post was helpful. Subscribe to our feed for more interesting articles.