In order to install FreeDOS on a hard drive, there must be an available partition for it, which can be either FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32. FAT16 is recommended for hard drives under 512MB, and FAT32 is recommended for hard drives over 512MB. Installation as a secondary operating system is also supported by the distribution, as it will attempt to integrate itself into detected existing bootloaders (Windows NT/2000/XP) or generate a multiboot menu itself (DOS up to 6.22, and all flavours of Windows 95, 98 and Millennium Edition).

If such operating systems already are installed on the computer with a FAT32 or FAT16 drive, FreeDOS can usually install itself on the same partition without disturbing them. On the other hand, installing another operating system next to (or on top of) FreeDOS might show issues if its installation program is not that tolerant. Note that Windows 2000 and XP install themselves on NTFS partitions by default, which is a filesystem unsupported by FreeDOS, so in many cases FreeDOS will not be able to reside on the same partition as Windows 2000 or XP. In the case of Linux or another UNIX variant, there will likely not be a FAT partition available, and one must be created.

The CD-ROM and floppy distributions have their own basic program to create and remove partitions (resizing is not supported). If no suitable partition is found, FreeDOS FDisk will be automatically launched so you can create a partition. FreeDOS can be installed both on primary and logical partitions, but can only start up (if booting from harddisk) from an active primary partition.

To work with partitions, several tools are available for different Operating Systems. FreeDOS comes with its own version of FDisk which is similar in interface to the MS-DOS utility of the same name, but has been reported to have serious bugs. These bugs will not affect most people, but if you are unsure, use an alternative. On linux, some partition tools commonly available are Fdisk, CFdisk?, Parted, and QTParted. Parted or QTParted are recommended if resizing of a partition is planned to make room for FreeDOS. Alternate partition tools available on FreeDOS are XFDisk, SPecial FDisk, Ranish Partition Manager, FIPS, and Presizer. For resizing partitions in DOS, FIPS or Presizer are recommended.

If you decided on using the FreeDOS Fdisk program, but you are unfamiliar with either partitioning or using this program, please read the detailed tutorial on this page. Otherwise skip it.

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TUTORIAL: Creating a primary partition for FreeDOS, using the FDisk program

Partitioning with FDisk is fairly simple and straightforward. First, the installation process suggests to run this program, as it failed to detect any FAT partition: (fdos menu choice here 1: fdisk, 2: ignore , 3:reboot)

Now the program itself shows an introduction screen and asks if you want to enable large disk support. The standard response would be yes, which instructs Fdisk to use FAT32 filesystem for any single newly created partition with a size of 512MB or larger (up to 2048 gigabytes)

(fdisk, enable fat32 yes or no)

On a newly obtained harddisk, all disk space is unpartitioned. You can create a primary partition up to the full capacity of the disk. If all space is already partitioned (your typical XP system), you are forced to first create unpartitioned space, either by deleting one or more partitions with help of FDisk, or run an external partitioning program that supports partition resizing (see above or commercial alternatives). Since FreeDOS cannot boot from a logical partition (located inside a so called extended partition), create a partition with option 1:Create Primary DOS Partition.

(option 1: Create Primary DOS Partition)

Next choose a size for the partition and answer any other questions. After that, go back to the part that prompted you to create or delete partitions (press ESC on your keyboard a few times to reach this screen). If you want to check the partition layout, select option 4 from the main screen.

(option 4: Partition layout.)

Exit the FDisk program by pressing ESC a few more times, and reboot when prompted (alternatively switch power on your computer case or press simultaneous the key combination Control-Alt-Delete on your keyboard). Your created partition will then be accessible as drive C: on the next boot and is almost ready for storing FreeDOS, programs and data on it.

Partitioning limitations for each individual harddisk:

• up to 4 primary partitions (DOS can only startup from one of these)
• up to 1 extended partition (counts as a primary partition entry in partition table)
• up to 24 logical partitions (extended partition acts as a container for these)

< Using your startup disk | Installation Overview | Initialize filesystem >