DTK Apex 386/33, User Manual

Page: 97 / 171

3-4 Hard Disk Drive Format
A hard disk must be formatted before it can be read from or written to.
If your hard disk requires this, you should carry out the following steps:
Step 1 — Preformat
The preformat utility is supplied by the system BIOS. You can press
the
<Esc>
key quickly just after the RAM test to enter the SETUP program.
Choose item 2 from the initial screen to preformat a hard disk. See
Figure 3-1.
Step 2 — Partition
This process creates DOS partitioning on a preformatted hard disk
drive. The DOS command “FDISK” handles this partitioning process.
Insert your DOS diskette in drive A and type a: to get the A prompt.
Then type:
A> FDISK <J>
The “FDISK” command displays a series of menus to help you partition
your hard disk for MS-DOS. With the “FDISK” command, you can...
create a primary partition,
create an extended partition,
change the active partition,
delete a partition,
display partition data, and
select the next fixed disk drive for partitioning on a system
with multiple fixed disks.
If your hard disk is 40MB, you may have partitions of up to 33MB in
size. 33MB is the maximum space for a partition allowed by DOS.
For more information on how to use create DOS partitions, see
Appen-
dix D
in the
MS-DOS User’s Guide and Reference.
Chapter 3: Operating Your System 13