Partitioning And Formatting The Drive - Seagate MEDALIST 1270 Installation Manual

20 Medalist 1270 Installation Guide, July 1995

Partitioning and formatting the drive

Before you can use your Seagate drive, you must partition and
high-level format it. In this guide we discuss formatting your drive
with DOS—refer to your DOS user's guide for assistance. If you
are using another operating system, consult your operating sys-
tem user's guide for formatting instructions.
Note. If you have not copied the free installation software to a
diskette, your computer will detect a partition on the drive.
Only the first two cylinders are formatted at the factory to
store the software files. You must erase this partition
before you can access the full drive capacity. You can
either transfer the files to a diskette—the partition is erased
when the transfer is complete—(see page 11 for instruc-
tions) or partition and format the drive as described below.
Low-level formatting
The drive is low-level formatted at the factory using 512 bytes per
sector. Low-level formatting is not required.
Partitioning
You must partition the drive into one or more logical drives before
you can use it.
Caution. Partitioning or formatting a drive at any level erases all
data on it. Make a backup copy of your existing files on
another drive before you repartition or reformat. Sea-
gate assumes no liability if you erase your data.
You can partition a drive as follows:
1. Insert a bootable diskette into Drive A. Turn the computer on.
2. After the computer has completed booting, remove the boo-
table diskette from Drive A. Insert a diskette that has the
FDISK utility into Drive A and type fdisk. Press
Note. If you have two drives in your system, the menu displays
five options. Option five allows you to select the drive
you want to partition. Be sure to select the correct drive.
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ENTER