The files contained in the ZIP archive are the ones I've used for successfully to boot up, and then partition and format large hard drives. I've used it personally on drives as large as 80MB, though it should work fine for even larger drives. I've used it many times to prep hard drives for use on BX motherboard systems running Win98SE. I've also used it to partition & format a drive for use with a dual-boot Win98SE/XP Pro installation. Should work fine for other motherboards and versions of Windows, though this disk doesn't support the NTFS files system used by WinNT, Win2K or XP. If you want to partition with that file system, you'll need to boot from the OS installation CD or from a set of special bootable floppies created for those operating systems. See the Microsoft web site for more info.

Keep in mind that three of the files contained herein (IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS and DRVSPACE.BIN) are "hidden" files that will not be visible in Explorer once extracted, unless you have configured Explorer to show hidden files & folders (accessible from the Explorer menu bar via Tools > Folder Options > View). They will also not be listed when a DIR command is run from the A prompt in DOS, unless the "hidden" attribute is turned off. This does not affect the function of the boot disk, however.

The copy of FDISK that is included here is the one with the "fix" for 64MB and larger partitions.

Unzip the file contents to an empty, formatted floppy disk and use it to boot the PC. IMPORTANT NOTE: the floppy you use should have been formatted with Win9x. Floppies formatted with WinNT, Win2K or XP probably won't be bootable. "Out of the box" new floppies may or may not work, depending upon how they were formatted when manufactured.

Once you boot up, you can run the FDISK and FORMAT commands from the A prompt in DOS. The boot-up supports a CD-ROM drive, too. There are several other DOS utilities included, as well, for special needs. DELPART.EXE is particularly useful when partitioning a drive previously used with the NTFS file system (i.e. NT kernel OS'es). This utility will allow you to delete such partitions, where FDISK will not. In such cases, run DELPART first to delete the NTFS partition(s), and then partition with FDISK, as usual.

Excellent directions for partitioning and formatting a hard drive using the above tools can be found at Darrell Krumreich's website at the following URL:

http://home.pacbell.net/dbk4297/fdiskformat.html

Please be advised that you use these files AT YOUR OWN RISK. I cannot and will not be responsible for any trouble you get yourself into, capiche?


Bob Matthews
a.k.a. Duh Voodoo Man
Updated 2/10/2003