The following does NOT apply to Windows XP, and some other
versions of Windows. (It is easier to answer when you state your
Operating System.)

Generic answer for WinME and lower:
Sometimes, and generally yes depending on the limitations
of the Mother Board BIOS.  The BIOS may not support the
hard drive at the full capacity in which case you will either
need a BIOS flash to increase the limitations (if you can get it),
a controller card with a built-in on board BIOS, or a third party
program called a "disk manager", DDO, or "drive overlay".

IF your BIOS directly supports the drive size,  all you need is
the BOOT disk from the Operating System you will be using,
(if  WinME and lower), and that contains the boot files and the
FDISK program that will allow you to set up the partitions.
After that you need to format the partitions.

Most hard drive manufacturers have programs on a floppy that
comes with the drive (or on their WEB site) that will test your
BIOS and advise you if the BIOS is capable of directly supporting
the drive (or not).

I hope I guessed your actual question correctly, and that this
helps.

                                               Rick Glazier

From: "Derick Keilty" <[log in to unmask]>
> I have a pentium 4 computer with a 60  Gigabyte hard drive.
is it possible to partition the hard drive without using third party
software. Thanks Derick Keilty

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