Primary Bootable Hard Disk

[cbh]

Explain the steps taken to prepare a primary bootable Hard Disk for use with MS-DOS. List the names of all the programs used in this preparation.

[Smokey]

Do you have access to a system running Windows 95/98?

[obenton]

I assume the drive is going to be used to boot MSDOS, and not win9x. Boot with a floppy that contains the version of MSDOS you want to use. Use fdisk to create a Primary DOS partition, and set it as the Active partition. Use format /s to format the drive and transfer the system files. Jumper the drive as Master or only drive, as the case will be, and put it at the end of the IDE cable that is connected to the motherboard's primary IDE channel. If it's a large hard drive, be aware that DOS and old motherboards have size limitations in detecting and using hard drives and drive partitions. You'd be best off using the version of DOS that comes with win98 - just use a win98 computer to make a win98 startup floppy. I don't think the win98 startup floppy contains fdisk.exe, but you can find it in c:\windows\command, and copy it to the floppy.