Formatting And Partitioning The Drive - Seagate ST9100A Installation Manual

8 ST9100A and ST9100AG Installation Guide, Rev. A
some drive diagnostic programs may fail, typically resulting in
time-out errors. Consult your system documentation or call your
system dealer or manufacturer for information on configuring
your system to receive 4 bytes of ECC.

Formatting and partitioning the drive

Caution. Reformatting or repartitioning a drive that contains
data may result in a partial or complete loss of that
data. Make sure all data has been safely backed up
before repartitioning or reformatting a drive. Seagate
Technology assumes no liability for lost data.
Low-level formatting
Seagate AT Interface drives are low-level formatted at the factory
and do not require additional low-level formatting prior to use.
Partitioning
A single disc drive can be subdivided into partitions that behave
as separate drives (labeled C, D, E, etc.). Versions of DOS prior
to Version 4.0 are not able to access more than 32 Mbytes of disc
space as a single drive. Therefore, drives having a capacity of
over 32 Mbytes must be divided into several smaller partitions
for use with these older versions of DOS. Seagate does not
recommend using the ST9100A or ST9100AG with a DOS version
prior to Version 3.3.
To partition a drive, you must first boot the system using a floppy
disk that contains system files. Partition the drive using the DOS
FDISK utility program (described in your DOS manual). If you are
partitioning a drive that will be used to boot the system, make
sure that the primary DOS partition is marked active.
High-level formatting
Once the drive is partitioned, use the DOS FORMAT command
(or equivalent utility program) to high-level format each of the