Partitioning and Formatting Guide

8/9/2019 Partitioning and Formatting Guide

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Partitioning and Formatting Guide

This guide is designed to explain how to setup your drive with the correctpartition and format for your operating system. This guide will go over partitioningand formatting drives in the following operating systems:

Windows 2000/XP Install Page 03

Windows 2000/XP Disk Management Page 07

Macintosh OS X Page 11

Linux Page 15

Windows 9.x and DOS Page 18

Macintosh OS 8.x and 9.x Page 21

This guide makes the assumption that the drive is properly installed in the systemand is being detected by the BIOS or controller card. If you need assistanceinstalling a drive, please view our Installation Guides at the following URL:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/instgde.htm

For further assistance you may also contact one of our Technical SupportCenters:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/sources/tsc.htm

All information is provided by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies on an "AS IS" basis only.Hitachi makes no representations or warranties, whether express or implied, regarding theinformation, including the warranty of non-infringement and non-interference and the impliedwarranty or terms of merchantability, and fitness or use for a particular purpose.

Use of information that is provided by Hitachi is at the recipient's own risk. Hitachi provides noassurances that any reported problems may be resolved with the use of any information thatHitachi provides. By furnishing information, Hitachi does not grant any licenses to any copyrights,trademarks, patents or any other intellectual property rights.

Any trademarks and product or brand names referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners. Please consult your Hitachi product manuals for complete trademarkinformation.

Any references to third parties are provided as reference only and are not recommendations of any products by Hitachi GST. Hitachi GST makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regardingthe performance or reliability of these companies or products.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Partitioning and Formatting Guide version 1.22
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/instgde.htmhttp://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/sources/tsc.htmhttp://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/instgde.htmhttp://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/sources/tsc.htm


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Windows 2000/XP hard drive setup duringinstallation

To begin the installation of Windows 2000 / XP, you will need to insert the

bootable Windows CD into the CD drive. If you are installing from floppies, insertthe first floppy into drive A:. Turn the system on.

One of the first things you will see during the installation process is Press F6 if you need to install additional drivers The message only appears for 6 secondsbefore the installation continues. You will need to press F6 to load additionaldrivers if you are using a SCSI controller card, a SATA controller card, or a RAIDcontroller card that is not natively supported by Windows. Check with your controller card manufacturer for the latest drivers.

*Wording on screenshots may differ slightly between Windows 2000 and XP.

Press "S" to specify the driver for the controller card.



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You are now presented with 3 options. For the purpose of this guide, pressEnter.

Before you can install the operating system you must press F8 and agree to thelicense agreement.

In order to install an operating system, you will need a partition on which toinstall. If a partition does not already exist, you must create one. To do this,highlight the "Unpartitioned Space" and press "C", for Create.



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Enter the capacity you want for the new partition and press Enter. If you want touse the entire space of the drive, press Enter without making any changes.

You will now be brought back to the screen which previously showed the"Unpartitioned Space" taking up the whole drive. Now, it shows it as Partition1[New ] (this means it has not yet been formatted). To continue with theinstallation process and format the drive, highlight the new partition and pressEnter.



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Before a new, un-partitioned disk can be used in Windows XP it must contain adisk signature . The first time that Disk Management is run after a new harddisk is installed, the Disk Signature and Upgrade Disk Wizard is started. If thewizard is cancelled, you may find that when you attempt to create a partition on

the new hard disk, the New Partition option is unavailable (appears dimmed). Inthis case a signature can be written on the hard drive by right clicking on the diskdescription window (lower pane, typically a red circle with a white dash coveringthe hard drive icon) and selecting Initialize Disk .

*Note: For drives larger than 137GB you will need Service Pack 3 for Windows2000, Service Pack 1 for Windows XP, or a controller driver that supports 48 bitaddressing.

To create a new partition or logical drive:In the Disk Management window, do the following:1. Right-click the Unallocated space and select New Partition .



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2. On the "Welcome to theNew Partition Wizard" page,

select Next .

3. On the "Select PartitionType" page, select the typeof partition that you want to

create, and then select Next .

4. On the "Specify PartitionSize" page, specify the size

in megabytes (MB) of thepartition that you want to

create, and then select Next .



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Installing a hard drive on Mac OS X

To partition a drive in the Mac OS, you will need to use a program called Disk

Utility. To use this program, follow the steps below.

1. Go to the " Go "menu and select

"Utilities ".

Another way toaccess Disk Utility:

Open the hard drive and select the Applications folder.Select the Utilities folder and inside you will find Disk Utility .

2. When theUtilities folder

opens, find the"Disk Utility " iconand double click.



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5. Select the number of partitions you want to create

6. Select the file system (format) for the partition



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Installing a Hard Drive to an Existing LinuxSystemThis guide uses FDISK to partition and format a drive. There are other utilitiessuch as CFDISK and QTParted that will partition and format a drive.

Note: If you are unsure of the syntax or switches of a command, you can alwaysrun the "man" command. This will bring up the manual page for whatever com-mand you specify.Example: man fdisk .

FDISKCommand Syntax:(fdisk /dev/xxx )(xxx = the drive designation with which you wish to work. Exam-ple: hda, hdb, sda, sdb)

Instructions for creating one partition using the entire capacityof the hard drive1. Enter the above command with the correct device with which you wish to work.2. Press M for a list of menu options.3. Choose P to list the partitions on this drive.4. Press N to create a new partition.5. Enter P for Primary partition.6. Enter 1 for the partition number.7. Choose the cylinder you wish the partition to start on or press Enter for the de-fault.When specifying the size of the drive, you can enter it in terms of the last cylinder or the size in MB's or KB's. To use the entire drive, just press Enter .9. Press W to write the changes.10. Press Q to exit FDISK

Instructions for creating multiple partitions1. Enter the command line to initiate the fdisk utility.2. Press N to create a new partition.3. Enter N to create a primary partition.4. Choose 1 for the partition number.5. Choose which cylinder you want to start the partition at or press "Enter" to se-lect the default. Enter either the last cylinder of the partition or the size. When en-tering the size, use the following format: +M or +K7. Press N to create another partition.8. Choose E for extended.9. Choose 2 for the partition number.As with DOS, the extended partition should take up the remaining space on thedrive. At this point, it is best to choose the default beginning cylinder.10. Press Enter to choose the default end cylinder.



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11. Press n to create another partition.12. Press l to create a Logical partition within the extended partition.13. Enter the first cylinder or press Enter to select the default.14. Enter either the last cylinder of the partition or the size.Repeat to use the remaining space on the drive. When you are finished, press W

to write the changes and then Q to exit.

Formatting a hard driveBefore a hard drive can be used, it must be partitioned and formatted. In DOS or Windows, you format a hard drive as FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS. In Linux, the filesystem is called EXT3 (or ReiserFS).To format a hard drive, use the following syntax:mke3fs /dev/xxx (xxx = the hard drive designation you wish to work with. Exam-ple: hda, hdb, sda, sdb)

This will format the partition you specified, with a Linux format. As with the Win-dows "format" command, this will erase everything on the hard drive. Be sure youare formatting the correct drive.

Adding a Mount PointAfter formatting the hard drive, you have to designate a point on the hard drivethat the system and user will use to access the hard drive. This is called a mountpoint. In the Microsoft world, it is comparable to assigning a hard drive letter.When adding a mount point for a hard drive, you have to first create a directorythat you will use to access the new partition.

mkdir MountPointName

After pressing the Enter key, you can verify the directory was created by issuingthe ls command. This will give you a directory reading of your current location.The new directory should be listed.

To manually mount the drive, use the mount command:

mount t ext3 /dev/hdc1 /MountPointName

mount is the command, -t is for the type of file system, /dev/hdb1 is for the first

partition on the secondary master IDE device, and /MountPointName is the loca-tion where the drive will be mounted.



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Edit fstab

After adding the mount point, you need to edit the fstab file. This is a file that willbe read during boot and will automatically mount all devices listed. To edit thisfile, type the following command or use the editor of your choice (nano, emacs,

vi, etc...): nano /etc/fstab

Once in the file, you need to add the appropriate entries. For information on thedifferent settings, use the man fstab command. Below is a summery of what youshould see:Column one: The device location (/dev/hdc1)Column two: The mount point (/newdrive)Column three: The files system type of the partition being mounted (ext2,msdos, etc...)Column four: Any switches or variables you wish to add. Normally, you can justtype default.

Column five: The dump field. This determines which filesystems need to bedumped. The boot partition is normally set to 1, most others should be set to 0(disabled)Column six: This will determine if fsck needs to be run on the mounted systemand in what order. A 0 will disable fsck from being run on that filesystem.After making the appropriate changes or entries, press Ctrl-x . Press Y when itasks if you want to save the file and Enter when it asks for the name (unless youwant to change the name). The mount point is created and the system knows tomount it at boot. You can now reboot the system and it will load the partition. Youcan now access that partition as a folder under the name you specified.

More information can be obtained from The Linux Documentation Project:http://www.tldp.orghttp://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.html

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.htmlhttp://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/fdisk_partitioning.html


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Partitioning and formatting a Hard Drive in Win-dows 9.x and DOS

1. Boot the system with a startup disk.

2. Type fdisk at the DOS prompt (a:\).3. When you first enter FDISK, you will see the following screen.

This warning page will show up if there is a drive larger than 512MB. You will see

this message anytime you use a current Hitachi GST drive.

Under most circumstances, you will want to select Y for large disk support(FAT32). If you select N (no) FDISK will partition the drive with FAT16 which hasa 2.1GB partition limitation.



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4. This is the main page of the fdisk program

Select 1 to create a partition on the drive.

5. Select option 1 to create a Primary partition. Fdisk will then check the driveintegrity. Once that is completed you can select the full size of the drive. Thenfdisk will check the drive integrity again. Once the integrity check has completedthe program will inform you to restart the computer.



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Formatting the hard drive

After creating the partition with fdisk you must format the drive. Boot with thestartup disk and at the DOS prompt type in format c: where 'c' is the drive letter of the partition you want to format. You will be warned before formatting the drive.

Additional information:

There is a cosmetic problem with some versions of FDISK. When you useFDISK to partition a hard disk that is larger than 64GB (64 gigabytes, or 68,719,476,736 bytes) in capacity, FDISK does not report the correct size of thehard disk. This is only a cosmetic problem; the utility will partition the hard drivecorrectly. However, Microsoft has released an update to address the issue. TheMicrosoft description of the issue and the patch for the 64-GB cosmetic limitationof FDISK can be found at the following URL:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263044

For an explanation of how MS-DOS and Windows 9.x assigns drive letters viewMicrosoft's Knowledge base article #51978:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;51978

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263044http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;51978http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;263044http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;51978


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Initializing an ATA hard drive in Macintosh OS 8.Xthrough 9.X Go to the System Folder, Utilities, and open Drive Setup .

1. Select the hard drive you want to initialize then select Initialize to proceed

to the Initialize screen.2. To create a single volume on the new hard drive, select Initialize to finish.3. To create multiple volumes or specify an alternate file format, select Cus-

tom Setup. Choose the partition arrangement and file system you want touse then select OK. Select Initialize to finish.

Once the hard drive is initialized, a new volume icon will appear on your desktopand the hard drive will be ready for use. You can verify the partition informationby going back to the Apple System Profiler and selecting the Devices and Vol-umes tab.


Partitioning and Formatting Guide

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