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Means the one the system will use to boot from.Īfter you've done all of the above FDISK steps, go back to option 4 from the main menu to see how your partitions are now set up. The last step to perform within FDISK is to set one of the partitions to be the 'active' one - this basically Confusing, I know, but this is due to design limitations laid out by the original IBM PC. Subsequent partitions (should you want to create them) are called 'extended DOS partitions', and for these to have a drive letter you then create a 'logical DOS drive' within the 'extended DOS partition'. You need to create a 'primary' DOS partition before anything else.

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If you have an 8 GB hard disk (or SD card or CompactFlash card acting like a hard disk) you will need to create a minimum of 4 partitions to make full use of its capacity.

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DOS Plus 1.1 and later supports 32 MB partitions. See the following table for the maximum DOS partition you can use: DOS VersionĪny version of DR-DOS 3.31 or higher supports 2 GB partition sizes. Whether this is even possible also depends on the version of DOS you are running. This is where you choose whether you want the full capacity of the drive to be a single drive letter or not. There will initially be none, so go back to the main menu and choose option 1 to create a DOS partition. If you choose option 4 from the main menu (see above) it will display all the current partitions on your drive. Within FDISK, drives are not letters yet - they are numbered starting from 1. Once booted and you're at the A: prompt, type: Any original manufacturer's DOS boot disk or an original Microsoft MS-DOS or IBM PC-DOS will have FDISK.EXE on it. Since you probably don't have a hard disk already setup on your PC, you firstly need to boot into DOS using a bootable floppy disk which also contains the FDISK.EXE utility. Depending on the DOS version you are using there are limits to the size of hard disk it supports:ĭOS v3.3 supports hard disks up to 32 MB formatted capacity.ĭOS v4.0 supports hard disks up to 512 MB formatted capacity.ĭOS v5.0 supports hard disks up to 2 GB formatted capacity. Even if you only want a single drive letter, say C:, for the entire drive, you must still run FDISK and define a single partition.

Step 2) Run FDISKįDISK.exe is an external DOS command which is used to 'partition' the hard disk (split it up into usable areas) after it's been low-level formatted. If you have no luck with DEBUG, or you know your hard disk controller doesn't have a low-level format utility stored in a ROM, you can use a utility called Seagate Disk Manager. It's worth mentioning that not all MFM/RLL hard disk controllers have a ROM BIOS with a formatter embedded within. G=C800:5 for DTC (Data Technonolgy) controllers G=C800:6 for OMTI controllers Now type one of the following commands, depending on your hard disk controller manufacturer: G=C800:5

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If you know you need to use the DEBUG.COM utility, follow these steps:Īfter booting your PC using a floppy disk, at the A: prompt type: On Zenith PCs there was a Zenith DOS command called PREP. This contained a convenient program to perform the low-level format. There are exceptions though, such as the original IBM PC XT 10MB hard disk which came with the IBM Advanced Diagnostics diskette.

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Hence permanent damage can (and probably will) occur if you do this!įor old MFM or RLL hard disk drives, each hard disk manufacturer would provide instructions on how to low-level format the drive - this typically involved using the DOS DEBUG.COM program to communicate directly with the hard disk controller card and send it an instruction to low-level format the hard disk (these hard disk controllers had a 'ROM BIOS extension' with a low-level format program built-in). If you're wanting to format an IDE or SCSI hard disk these come from the factory already low-level formatted, so jump straight to step 2.Īgain, to be clear: WARNING: DO NOT LOW-LEVEL FORMAT AN IDE DRIVE! They have special hidden areas of the drive that store information about its capacity which is wiped out if low-level formatted. This step is *only* needed if you have an extremely old MFM or RLL hard disk drive. Low-level formatting a hard disk actually physically formats it - it actually lays down tracks and sectors and it wipes all data off the drive. In the early days of the PC there were 3 programs you needed to run to format a hard disk:ģ) Run FORMAT.exe to 'high-level format' the disk. Formatting a hard disk in DOS requires a few more tasks and careful thinking compared to formatting a floppy disk.