Installing A Workstation > Pre-Install > Partitioning

Partitioning

Once the workstation's hard disk is cleaned off, you will need to partition it.

A partition is a section of hard disk set aside for an operating system. A hard disk can have one or more partitions, each with a different OS. Partition information is held in a partition table, which is read by the FDISK program.

Workstations to be installed on NetWare LANs using ZENWorks have two partitions: one for ZENWorks and one for Windows. If you are not installing a workstation on such a network, skip to the Windows Partition section.

ZENWorks Partition

1. Before you restart the workstation, replace the first restoration CD with the the ZENWorks Imaging CD.
2. Reboot the workstation.
3. The ZENWorks Linux startup menu will appear. At the shell prompt, type install and press Enter.
4. Wait for the partition install program to finish. This will take less than five minutes.
5. Type img info hard if you need any hardware information, such as memory size or network card's MAC address.
6. Replace the Imaging CD with the first restoration CD.

At this place, I should caution you to partition and format the Windows partition before you lay an image on it. Otherwise, the imaging program will crash with a segmentation fault, leaving junk in the partition table.

Windows Partition

FDISK does two things to a Windows partition: Creates the partition and makes it active (meaning you can boot from it), and verifies the partition.

1. Reboot the workstation.
2. Choose to boot from the CD.
3. Choose to boot to the DOS prompt. You should be at the prompt D:\DOS>
4. Type FDISK and press Enter.
5. Press Enter to accept all defaults.
6. FDISK will create the partition. This takes about 5-10 minutes, depending on the partition size.
7. Press Enter to start verification. This, too, takes about 5-10 minutes.
8. At the closing screen press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart the workstation.