Formatting a Disk under DOS

This page shows you how to format a disk drive into one primary partition and one extended partition containing a logical drive under DOS or under a DOS box in Windows 95 (OSR2), 98 or ME. Windows version 1 only supports partitions up to 2GB and is not covered here.

If you are formatting a drive for Windows 95 please note that large disk mode should not be enabled or FDisk will create FAT32 partitions.

Instructions

1. Boot into DOS or start a DOS session from Windows.
2. Enter the command FDISK them press ENTER.

3. If you are creating a primary partition for Windows 95 release 1 do not enter N in the above menu.
4. The default disk is disk 1, if you are setting up partitions on a new disk select option 5 Change current fixed disk drive.

5.  A new disk is identified by the free space column, in the example below this is disk 3, enter 3 then press Enter.

6. The Current fixed disk drive is now 3, select option 1 to create a DOS partition.

7. Select option 1: Create Primary DOS Partition.

8. On the next form enter N to Use maximum space, then enter the size of the primary partition on the following form, below we have entered 10240  for 10GB.

9. Once created repeat the process but this time select Create Extended DOS Partition and use the remaining space. In this partition create one or more logical drives.

1. Once the logical drives have been created you are required to re-boot your PC.

After re-booting your PC.

Back to:

Creating a Dual-Boot System