In the previous step, a FAT partition was created. Unless you were lucky enough to use a partitioning program that creates AND formats a partition, it is now necessary to create a filesystem on the partition. This filesystem is an index that keeps track of what data is stored on what location exactly. Everything stored on the partition counts as data, including FreeDOS. Some documentation refer to the creation process as 'filesystem initialisation'.. Other documents refer to this process as 'formatting your disk'. There are many tools that can perform this function, however the FreeDOS clone of MS-DOS format works fine and does the job nicely.

FreeDOS mimicks the behaviour of other DOS flavours. Only partitions recognized when FreeDOS is booting up are usable. This means after changing your partition layout (using Fdisk or another similar program) you will need to reboot. Startup again from your installation disk and our kernel will assign driveletters (starting with C: and up to Z:) to all recognized FAT partition on all recognized harddisk drives. Only disks that have a driveletter assigned can be used by DOS programs, including FORMAT.

If the installation is started from the floppy or CD-ROM distributions, Format will show up automatically if your DOS partition is not formatted. Running the program (re)initialises the filesystem, which means it removes all previous existing data on the partition. No machine crafted by mankind is perfect, so before FORMAT starts its destructive work, it wants you to confirm that (re)initialising the filesystem on the partition is what you intended to do. To run the format program manually, a standard command would be "Format C: /V:FreeDOS" where C: is the drive to format and V:FreeDOS is the volume name to give the drive.

Your harddisk partition is now ready to store FreeDOS and other data.

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