How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition a Hard Drive

This is the correct way to prepare your new hard drive for use.

Steps

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    Insert your boot diskette and turn on your pc.
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    At the a: prompt type fdisk then hit enter.
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    Click yes you want to use large disk support.
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    To Delete the existing partition, Type 3 and press Enter.
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    To re-create a new partition, Type 1 and press Enter.
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    Restart your pc.
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    At the a: prompt type fdisk/mbr ( that fdisk your master boot record.
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    When done, restart PC.
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    At the a: prompt type format c:/s/u and yes you want to erase all data so type "y" when prompted...
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Community Q&A

  • Question
    What do I enter for the volume label?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Whatever you want; it's just the name that your volume will have. For example, if you used "My Volume," you would see it listed as "My Volume" in your PC.
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Warnings

  • If you have a NTFS drive, be careful as most DOS boot diskettes so not know about NTFS and can severely damage/ corrupt your disk.
    ⧼thumbs_response⧽
  • If you drive is FAT32, you will need an updated boot disk from Windows 95/OSR2 or later to be able to see any existing partitions.
    ⧼thumbs_response⧽
  • Do not enable large disk support of your installing 95, make sure it's fat16.
    ⧼thumbs_response⧽
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Things You'll Need

  • 1 boot disk

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About This Article

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 14 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 99,843 times.
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Co-authors: 14
Updated: October 8, 2020
Views: 99,843
Categories: Hard Drives
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