Wednesday, October 1, 2008

DISK PARTITIONING

FDISK.EXE is a DOS based command line driven Microsoft partitioning utility. Its purpose is to display boot, disk and partition information, modify existing partitions, create new ones and/or delete the ones you want on all installed fixed hard disk(s), but ONLY WITH COMPLETE DATA LOSS!

run one of these commands from any DOS prompt:
FDISK /?
or:
HELP FDISK
to display the FDISK.EXE help screen.

HIDDEN PARAMETERS
Hidden parameter are not documented by Microsoft and is find by users threw experiments.

1) FDISK /FPRMT :
FDISK /FPRMT bypasses the FDISK startup screen, but enables interactive FAT16/FAT32 support. This can be used to force FDISK to create FAT32 partitions smaller than 512 MB, normally not possible by default.
2) FDISK /MBR :
FDISK /MBR recreates the boot sector of the first (bootable) hard disk overwriting it with a fresh copy, by writing a new Master Boot Record (MBR) based on existent disk structure, without altering the partition table information.
Can be used to repair a damaged/corrupted MBR (i.e. by a virus).
3) FDISK /ACTOK :
FDISK /ACTOK skips disk integrity checking, thus speeding up the partitioning process.
4) FDISK /PARTN :
FDISK /PARTN saves the partition information to a plain text file called PARTSAV.FIL, which can be viewed afterwards using any text editor/viewer, like EDIT.COM in DOS or Notepad in Windows.

Formatting Partitions

FORMAT.COM is an external MS-DOS command, located by default in C:\Windows\Command
Hidden Parameter :
Hidden parameter are not documented by Microsoft and is find by users threw experiments.

1) FORMAT /AUTOTEST :
FORMAT /AUTOTEST checks for the existing format of your disk, unless the /U (UNCONDITIONAL) parameter is also used, and then proceeds with an UNATTENDED DISK(ETTE) FORMAT:

DOES NOT prompt for a volume label!
DOES NOT prompt to format another disk(ette)!
NO delay: NO user intervention!
Ends WITHOUT pausing!
After completion, it DOES display disk space statistics.

No comments: