Make all physical connections and settings for the hard drive installation. Configure the proper master/slave settings for IDE or the proper address for SCSI drives. Don’t mount the hard drive until the setup process is successful, but position the drive in the direction it will be mounted.

Boot from a system floppy if necessary, otherwise boot from the C: drive with access to FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM. Copy both of these files to the boot floppy if necessary before installation begins. While booting, enter SETUP and enter the necessary information for IDE or make sure no drive is listed for SCSI.

Exit SETUP, finish booting and type FDISK <Enter> and choose the proper drive if more than one is available using the FDISK menu option #5. If only one drive is available, there will be no option #5.

Partition the drive as desired by the user of required by the operating system constraints. First create a PRIMARY partition using FDISK option #1, #1. If more than one partition is desired or required, the additional partitions will reside in the EXTENDED partition area. Create this partition using FDISK option #1, #2 and #1, #3. These will be referred to as "logical" drives because they aren’t really separate physical drives.

Make the primary partition active using option #2 in the FDISK menu options if it will be a bootable partition (the C: drive). Otherwise, this is not required.

Re-boot the computer and format the partition(s) with FORMAT DriveSpecifier <Enter>. Switches used may include /u for unconditional format and /autotest to skip "Are you sure?" question. To make the primary partition bootable you can include the /s switch. However, a full OS install will still be necessary.

Check the partition(s) to ensure they have been properly established.