Need Help Partitioning New 20 gig GXP75

[jkpen]

Hello Gang,

I have couple of very basic questions if I may? I am sitting in front of my new system in an attempt to bring it to life. Actually I have 2 of everything within reach at the moment. (Monitor stacked on moinitor, etc.) Mobo and cpu are in, as well as video card and all drives. I have already configured my BIOS. Using Disk Manager from IBM I have walked through it, and currently have it formatted as a single partition. I really want to change this before I load my operating system on it. I can make the changes, if I just knew how big to make each partition. Only thinking about 2 right now. One for OS and other for everything else.

I want to put Windows 98SE on a seperate partition. How big should I make this partition, and where does DOS go in this process?

I currently have a previous version of DOS6.22 on a disk from my current pc. Only problem is that it also contains the cd rom drivers. I have drivers for my new cdrom on another disk, so I don't want to load the old ones from previous drive. I guess I could attempt to extract the DOS from the diskette and createone without the drivers. It would be nice to just go and download it somewhere. Any ideas where to get a copy?

Thanks, I'll be awaiting a response. <hehe>

Joe

PS Full specs to follow

 

[JimMc]

Here's a link to SuOrangeman's partition dissertation Everything You Always....

Why would you want to install DOS, very old programs? I would just pick my partition size, a gig or two is enough, see the dissertation, fdisk it with your boot disk, format the partitions and you're done. The Win98 disk has CDROM drivers on it.

 

[jkpen]

Thank you.

Joe

 

[Modus]

When installing Windows, you want to make sure that the partition it's destined for is fresh. In other words, don't dirty it with DOS 6.x boot files, disk manager crap, and other silliness.

Many people end up installing DOS on their fresh 20G hard drives just so they can get the DOS CDROM drivers installed, which are necessary to begin Windows Setup. The problem is, this leaves the real mode DOS CDROM drivers permanently installed even after Windows has been setup, which can cause performance difficulties. Also, the DOS boot disk will often have a 6.x system as opposed to Windows 95 or 98, forcing you to use FAT16 for your initial partitioning. And who knows what workarounds Win 9x implements to install itself on a DOS system disk.

Bottom line, you are better off using a Win 9x boot disk with CDROM support to format the hard drive and initiate Windows Setup. After that, Windows can use its own (better) internal CDROM drivers. Now the only question becomes, how to get a Win 9x boot disk with CDROM support?

There are many available on the web, but your best bet is to visit any Win98 machine (not Win95), and click Start > Settings > Control Panel. Click Add/Remove Programs, Startup Disk, Create Disk. This will create an exact duplicate of the Windows 98 Startup Disk that comes included with certain OEM packages of the operating system. It features support for almost any IDE or SCSI CDROM configuration imaginable, and though there are more versatile boot disks available, it gets the job done (I personally created my own custom boot disk with some useful little tools). Your first step is to partition and format the drive using FAT32 (ie. confirm large disk support when starting FDISK). Your second and last step is D:SETUP <-'

As far as partitioning your drive into smaller chunks, the only compelling reason to do so is to support mulitiple operating systems. Unless you plan on dual-booting, multi-partitioning provides little added gain and much added hassle. See our original discussion on this, Why Partitioning isn't Worth the Pain

Have fun.

Modus

 

[SUOrangeman]

Glad to see Modus back in top form.

Hope our thoughts and random musings have helped you a little.

-SUO