How do I install my Western Digital hard drive using FDISK and FORMAT?

Once the drive is physically installed and the BIOS set up correctly, you can run the FDISK and FORMAT commands to setup your drive. FDISK creates your partitions and assigns your drive letters. Formatting the drive prepares it to accept data by creating a file system. These files can be found on your Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows ME Startup diskette.

  1. Boot to your Startup Diskette.
  2. At the A: prompt, type “FDISK” and press ENTER.
  3. The first screen asks if you want to enable large disk support for using FAT32 partitions. Answer “Yes” if you want to use a FAT32 partition. At the main menu, you will see 4 options if only one hard drive is present, and 5 if you have more than one hard drive.
  4. If you have more than one hard drive installed in your computer, you should see 5 options. Select option number 5 (Change Current Fixed Disk).
  5. From the next screen, select the hard drive that needs a partition. After you select the correct hard drive, you will be returned to the main menu of FDISK.
  6. At the main menu, select option number 1 (Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive) and press ENTER.
  7. At this menu select Option number 1 (Create Primary DOS Partition) and press ENTER.
  8. At this point FDISK will verify the drive integrity and respond back with a message. "Do you want to use the maximum available space for the Primary DOS partition?" Answer "Yes" to this question.
  9. Once the Partition has been created you will get a message stating the Drive Letters have been Changed or Added, and you will be asked to reboot the computer.
  10. Next, verify the drive letter of the partition that was just created. At the A: prompt type FDISK and press ENTER.
  11. If you have more then one hard drive installed in your computer you should see 5 options. Select option number 5 (Change Current Fixed Disk).
  12. From the next screen, select the hard drive that needs a partition. After you select the correct hard drive, you will be returned to the main menu of FDISK.
  13. Press 4 to View Drive Information. This screen should show you both the size of the partition that was created and the drive letter assigned.
  14. Reboot to your Startup Diskette.
  15. At the A: prompt, type FORMAT x: where x is the drive letter you want to format.

Close this Window