There comes a time when it becomes necessary
to either reformat your hard drive or else, if
you have just installed a new hard drive, create
a new partition. This can easily be achieved
during the installation of
Windows XP or simply from the setup
procedure of the XP CD.
One point worth drawing your attention to,
however, is that, if your hard disk is not empty
- in other words it contains data - at the time
you come to reformat or create a partition, all
of the data on the drive will be destroyed.
Therefore do not attempt to reformat or create
partitions using the XP setup unless you have
backed up all your important data to CD or tape
media.
The object of the exercise of partitioning is
to create a master partition for you to install
a copy of XP onto your pc. Further partitions can
easily be created either during the XP installation or else after XP
has been installed. To create a partition from
within windows use the disk management options from within
Administrative Tools.
- Before starting make sure that your
CD-ROM is the first boot disc. You may
need to make alterations in the BIOS. see
13 How do I Enable CD-ROM support in the BIOS
- Insert the Windows XP CD
into your CD-ROM and reboot your machine.
- The Windows XP files will begin loading
into memory.
- When the Welcome to Setup
screen appear press Enter.
- The next screen should be the license agreement.
- Press F8 to accept.
- Set up will now search your hard drive to
see if any other installations of XP exist on
your drive.
- If a copy of XP is found you will be given
the option of either Repairing or
Installing a New Copy.
- Select Install New Copy.
- The next screen will show all existing
partitions and unpartitioned space.
- Use the arrow keys to
select the partition or unpartitioned space you
require.
- Now if you want to Delete
a partition press D followed by
L on the next screen.
- Repeat this procedure for all partitions
you wish to Delete.
- After all partitions have been deleted
you can select the unpartitioned space and begin
creating the new partition.
- To Create a partition in
the unpartitioned space press C.
- On the next screen type the size of your
new partition in megabytes and then press
Enter.
- If you now want Windows XP to continue
its installation select the partition you want
to install XP on and press Enter.
- NOTE: If you don't want
to install XP and instead you want to Quit the
installation press F3 twice.
- If you are continuing with installation
the next screen will be the format screen.
- The available format options are:
Format the partition by using the NTFS file system (Quick)
Format the partition by using
the FAT file system (Quick)
Format the partition by using
the NTFS file system
Format the partition by using
the FAT file system
Leave the current file system
intact (no changes)
- If the partition has already been
formatted then the 'Leave the current
file system intact' is highlighted.
- using the Up and
Down Arrow keys select the file system
you want your partition to be formatted in and
press Enter.
- As a general rule the following file
system rules apply:
Partitions below 2GB FAT16
Partitions below 32GB FAT16
Partitions above 32GB FAT32
and/or NTFS
- After the partition has been formatted
Windows XP will continue to install as normal.