How to Partition the External Hard Disk Drive

These are the simple steps to Partition your Hard Disk and this step by step helps you both in Ms-Dos as well as in Windows also.

Using Disk Management under Windows 2000/XP

Note: The external hard disk drive cannot work with the “Dynamic” disk type. Do not upgrade the external hard disk to drive “Dynamic” disk type, always use it with “Basic” disk type. This partition is used only for windows 2000/XP.

1. To partition the external hard disk drive under Windows 2000 or Windows XP, please plug in the external hard disk drive and make sure it is recognized and then:
♦ In Windows 2000: click Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management, then the “Computer Management” window will be opened.
♦ In Windows XP: click Start -> Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management, then the “Computer Management” window will be opened.

2. Click on “Disk Management” on the left part of this window, all connected disk drives will be listed in the right part. Find out the Disk # that indicates the external hard disk drive, for example, on the following picture, “Disk 1” is the external hard disk drive. On the right side of the “Disk 1” is the status of the partitions of this drive, you can create a new or delete an existing partition by right-clicking on this area.

The following steps will describe how to create a new partition on this external hard disk drive.

Note:

If the hard disk drive in the external enclosure is a new unpartioned drive, a “Stop” mark will
indicate this drive is an “Unknown” type of disk (refer to the figure shown on the right side)
when “Disk Management” is opened. In this situation, the Windows system will not allow you to
create a partition with this drive. In this case, you can:

♦ In Windows 2000: Windows will start up the “Write Signature and Upgrade Disk Wizard” immediately. You can use this wizard to initialize the hard disk drive to the “Basic” disk
type and can then create partition in the drive.

♦ In Windows XP: you can right-click on the “Stop” mark, and then click “Initialize disk” to
initialize the hard disk drive to the “Basic” disk type and can then create partition in the
drive.

3. If the type of the hard disk drive is “Dynamic”, you must change it to the “Basic” type. To do this, rightclick on “Disk 1”, and then click “Revert to Basic Disk” from the options. Wait for a few seconds, the type of the hard disk drive will be then changed to “Basic” type.

4. To create a new partition in the hard disk drive, right-click on the partition area (right area) of “Disk 1”, then click on “Create Partition…”, the “Create Partition Wizard” appears, click Next.

5. Select “Primary partition”, click Next.

6. Specify the size that you want this partition to be, click Next.

7. Assign a drive letter for this partition, please use the default value, and click Next.

8. Refer to the figure shown below, select “Format this partition with the following settings”, choose the file system, and specify a name for the volume label, select “Perform a Quick Format”, then, click Next.

9. Click Finish to start the formatting, after the process is done, the “Disk Management” window is changed as below. Make sure the status of the partition is “Healthy”.

10. Now, a partition is created in the external hard disk drive, data can now be written to it. If desired, one or more partitions can be created in the same drive. For this, just repeat the steps above.



Using FDISK under Windows 98SE/Me.

FDISK is a program to create one or more partitions in the hard disk drive. (Data can only be written to the drive after this is partitioned and formatted.) To partition the external hard disk drive, you must execute FDISK under the MS-DOS mode under Windows 98SE/Me, please follow these steps:

1. Boot-up the computer into Windows 98SE/Me system. Plug the external hard disk drive to computer, and make sure it is recognized.

2. Go into the MS-DOS mode by click on Start -> Programs -> MS-DOS Prompt.

3. At the DOS prompt, type “FDISK” and press Enter.

4. In the first screen of FDISK, answer the question: “Do you want to enable large disk support?”

Y if you want to create a partition larger than 2GB (FAT32).
N if you want to create a partition small than 2GB (FAT16).

5. The next screen is “FDISK OPTIONS”. You must type 5 on this screen to change the current fixed disk drive, the default fixed drive set by FDISK is the internal hard disk drive. If you do not change it to the external hard disk drive, the data of internal hard disk drive will be destroyed.

If the option 5 does not appear on this screen, it means the external hard disk drive is not installed properly, please check the software installation.

6. In “Change Current Fixed Disk Drive” screen, type the disk drive number that is assigned to the external hard disk drive (usually, the external hard disk drive is the fixed disk drive number 2).
7. Back to “FDISK OPTIONS” screen, type 4 to display the content of the fixed disk drive, check the content to make sure the current drive is the external hard disk drive.

8. Now you can create (type 1) or delete (type 3) the partition of the external hard disk drive.

9. After you finish FDISK, reboot computer to activate the changes.

Use it in your own risk.