China DOS Union

Today I helped my friend partition a new 120G hard drive. I did partition experiments using MS's FDISK.EXE and FREEDOS's FDISK.EXE. The situation is as follows:

For FREEDOS's FDISK.EXE:
It can recognize the 120G hard drive (the displayed capacity is basically correct, and 120G is shown as: 114479M)
The partitioning speed is extremely fast (no detection process can be seen, it can be said that it directly shows the hard drive partition capacity)
But after partitioning and restarting, there is a drive letter misalignment
When starting Pqmagic (for the purpose of verifying the partition capacity), it prompts that there is an error in the partition, and whether to repair it
In Pqmagic, the partition has an error, and Pqmagic cannot be used to partition and repair

Then, I deleted all partitions of the hard drive with FREEDOS's FDISK, and used MSDOS (WINME)'s FDISK to partition. The situation is as follows:
It cannot directly show the hard drive capacity (120G is shown as: 11447M, which does not match the actual capacity)
Next, it prompts something like FAT16 and FAT32 (I'm sorry for my poor English. I added the /fprmt parameter before partitioning to make FDISK automatically use the FAT32 format), and continue the partitioning operation...
After completion, restart and format successfully with FORMAT (I tried to format with FREEDOS's FORMAT and it had an error and couldn't be formatted, which is the same situation as after partitioning with FREEDOS's FDISK)
Finally, start Pqmagic (to verify the partition capacity), and the displayed values are the same as the actual size of the partition

But the partitioning speed is too slow, and it needs to be used with QF.EXE to improve the speed.

After this experiment, I think that although MSDOS's FDISK cannot correctly display the disk capacity when partitioning a 120G large hard drive, it is okay to partition a 120G hard drive (during partitioning, the primary partition is 13%, each logical partition is 20% respectively, and after restarting, the actual size of the partition is consistent with the proportion during partitioning). I think MS's FDISK is still a relatively easy-to-use partitioning tool.

The above is just my personal partitioning experience, and I can't guarantee that the result will be the same in other computers.

Is this Free FDISK version 1.20? The disk repair function of PQMagic is really bad, much worse than NDD 2002.

Yes, the version is Free FDISK Version 1.2.0. Because PQMagic displays the disk partition size in a graphical way, which is more intuitive, and it will directly display incorrect partitions. Through testing on this computer, MSDOS FDISK can support partitioning a 120G large hard disk. Although the number displayed initially differs by one digit from the actual one, after partitioning and formatting, the disk partition size displayed by DIR has not decreased. The installation of the WINDOWS system runs normally.

It is suggested to use spfdisk.

Okay, I'll try... The version I found is the Traditional Chinese version from March 2000. Everyone can also give it a try and see how it goes.

Download: Open the attachment

Software Introduction
A software that integrates "Hard Disk Partition Tool (FDISK)" and "Boot Manager", completely free, and very powerful in function.

Startup Manager Installation Program:
　　1. Execute in MS-DOS environment.
　　2. The user interface is fully Chinese-ized, which may reduce the sense of strangeness for beginners.
　　3. Can add a "passcode" to a certain boot option or overall options.
　　4. Can choose to install in the MBR or the boot sector of a primary partition on a certain hard disk, or can be installed on a floppy disk.
　　5. The startup manager (SPF Boot Manager) installed by SPFdisk, when booting, also presents a light bar-style Chinese menu.
　　6. The user interface of this program is almost all light bar-style menus, which can make users use it more easily.
　　7. Can boot the primary partition DOS on the second hard disk and make that hard disk the first hard disk!
　　8. Can hide the same type of primary partition during boot to prevent mutual interference during boot.
　　9. Can add floppy disk boot to this startup manager without changing the CMOS settings!
　　10. Can choose whether to create an UNDO file during installation. If the program's own bug causes damage to the user's disk system during installation, this file can be used to immediately restore the partition state before installation!
　　11. Can set virtual keys, and automatically simulate pressing several keys set by the user during boot. If there is a second menu, it can simplify the number of menu levels! For example, when Win95 boots, pressing F4 can enter the old version of MS-DOS, and this program can make Win95 and DOS both added to the boot menu, and when selecting MS-DOS boot, this program will replace pressing the F4 key to enter.

Hard Disk Partition Tool:
　　1. Supports hard disks larger than 8.4GB.
　　2. No matter what is done in this tool, as long as Y is not answered in the dialog box that says "Will immediately act" and no storage is selected when leaving, the hard disk will never be violated.
　　3. Can create four primary partition areas.
　　4. Provides two storage methods: "destructive" and "non-destructive", so that the user can decide whether to clear the boot sector, which is quite helpful for "adjustment of partition size" or "rescue". The user can still not damage the original data after adjusting the DOS partition size.
　　5. Can change the System ID.
　　6. When creating a primary partition, the user can customize the starting cylinder, so that the damaged cylinder area can be skipped.
　　7. Can hide a partition on the hard disk so that it is invisible after restart.
　　8. Can swap the order of two partitions of the same type on the same hard disk (if the starting cylinder is not in a special position). PS. The so-called type refers to primary partition or logical partition.
　　9. When saving the partition table, the user can choose to create an UNDO file. If the program's own bug causes damage to the user's disk system after saving, this file can be used to immediately restore the disk partition state before installation!
　　10. If the tail boundary of a certain DOS or OS/2 partition is changed (this space will become larger or smaller), then theoretically, when choosing "non-destructive" storage, the content of the boot sector of this partition should also be adjusted accordingly. The built-in hard disk partition tool in this program allows the user to choose whether to adjust it on behalf of the program.

Try Disk Man.

Disk Man is also a very useful tool. Its new version is DISKGEN, which is 150K in size. It's not very suitable to put it in the boot disk. It takes up too much space.

DiskGen (DiskMan) is in Chinese, so it doesn't seem appropriate to put it in my general MS-DOS 7.10 boot disk because international users' usage needs to be considered. Moreover, my MS-DOS 7.10 boot disk is used for various purposes, including going online, listening to MP3s, etc., not for a specific purpose, and it's not good to occupy too much space with it.

spfdisk has both English and Chinese versions. I've been using it since 1999. With the enhancement of functions, I basically use it for partitioning now. It's a very good partitioning tool, and it has many functions such as formatting function, multi-boot menu, partition table repair (the function is not very strong), etc. I think it's much better than fdisk. Moreover, Microsoft's fdisk has bugs, is slow, and has no formatting function...

PQmagic version 8.0 and above is still okay. I used it to partition an 80G hard drive and there were no problems.
lydong Have you tried a tool called F32??? Using it to partition and format an 80G hard drive takes 1 minute.

I have also used F32, but it crashed when I first used it, so I don't use it now. When partitioning large hard drives, I always use the Chinese version of PQmagic. I'm looking for SPFDISK mainly because it's smaller and can replace FDISK to be placed in the boot disk.

The following is the speech of playboy2925 on 2003-4-8 12:15:01:
PQmagic version 8.0 and above is still okay. I have used it to partition an 80G hard disk, and there were no problems.
lydong Have you tried a tool called F32??? Using it to partition and format an 80G hard disk takes 1 minute.

Using SPFDISK takes less than 1 minute.

sfdisk
I feel it's okay. 106.037
Supports quite a lot of partition types!
Put it on my website for everyone to see!
http://f3.2288.org/sfdisk.exe

Use GDISK.

Is the error of FDISK.EXE in FREEDOS when partitioning a 120GB hard drive an isolated phenomenon? Has anyone else tried it? Please share. Also, does DM 9.56 support a 120GB hard drive?