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Warning
It's possible to lose data accidentally in DriveSetup (by for instance initializing a drive). Pay close attention to all warning dialogs.

 

Warning
Partitioning and formatting a disk or a partition destroys all data on it! Back up data you want to keep before partitioning the disk.

 

Info

Some important terms to remember:

A disk drive is physical device; a SCSI or IDE hard disk.

You can partition a disk into multiple volumes.

A volume is a logical device.

 

Info
The drive or volume you want to partition must be unmounted.
 
DriveSetup

DriveSetup lets you work with any type of drive supported by Zeta. You can mount/unmount, format, partition, eject and initialize disks connected to your computer.

The Drive Setup window shows the drives currently attached to the system, whether mounted or not. The window below shows the drives connected to the computer: A floppy, a hard disk, a CD drive and a Zip drive.

A small triangle appears next to partitioned drives with multiple volumes. Clicking on the triangle will show you the volumes on that specific drive.

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The table below identifies and describes the information displayed in the Drive Setup window:

Devices lists the SCSI, IDE, or floppy drive devices you can mount on the computer.

Map Style identifies the partition style. Currently Zeta supports two styles Apple and Intel.

Partition Type shows the specific partitions on a given volume. Zeta recognizes Be File System (BFS), DOS 16-bit and 32-bit, Macintosh HFS (Hierarchical File System), ISO 9660, and OFS (Old Be File System) partitions.

File System shows the specific file system for each volume.

Volume Name shows the name for each volume on a drive.

Mounted At shows the path to the mounted volume.

Size shows the size of each device and/or volume.


Partitioning a Disk

DriveSetup can create multiple partitions on a disk, except floppy disks (which are to small to partition) and read-only media like CDs and DVDs.

You partition your hard disk to allocate a portition of it to Zeta. You can create either Intel- or Apple-style partitions in DriveSetup.

Note that as Zeta currently only runs on x86 machines you must choose Intel-style partition.

 

Creating Intel-Style Partitions
Choose Partition from the Setup menu.

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The Partition Map panel lets you create as many as four partitions. Set the partition type in the top part of the Partition Map, using the Type popup list, or enter the number manually, if you know it.

Check the Active box of the partition you want to make active; only one partition can be active at a time.

Set the layout of your partitions in the bottom part of the window. Click the Layout button to choose from four preset configurations. You can also set the partition size manually by dragging the sliders in each partition bar. The minimum partition size for Zeta is 500 MB.

The lock icons at the left end of the partition bars are there to keep you from accidentally losing data in partitions that you don't wish to modify. Click the icon to unlock it. A dialog warns that you may lose data if you modify the partition. As further protection against losing data, the color of the partition bar changes from blue to red when the change you're making to a partition's size is about to cause you to lose data.

After you've the configured the partitions, click OK to partition the drive.
To use your new partitions, you have to mount them.


Initializing a Disk
Initializing a disk prepares it for data in a certain file system format; e.g., Mac HFS, DOS, BFS. You must initialize a new BFS partition before you can write data to it:

To initialize a disk, select the disk and unmount it.

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Select Initialize from the Setup menu. Your initialization choices are Be File System, dos(Intel machines), Mac HFS, ISO 9660, or the Old Be File System.

A dialog that lets you name the volume and set the file system block size appears. The default size is 1024, and gives the best performance in most cases. If you are an expert and will have only a few very large files, you might want to increase the system block size.


Formatting a Disk
Formatting is a time consuming, low-level process. You should attempt it only if initialization fails.

To format a disk, select it, unmount it, and choose Format from the Setup menu. In the warning dialog that appears click Format to proceed.

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