You can actually partition and format a hard drive using 3 different methods
excluding using some third party software.

First you can use a Windows 95, 98, or ME boot diskette with FDISK and
FORMAT on it. All you need to do to create a boot diskette is go into
Control Panel and click on the Add or Remove Programs icon and go to the
create a startup diskette option. After the diskette is created then you use
the built in search feature on you computer to look for the FDISK and FORMAT
files and copy it onto the start up diskette you created. Then you are done.
Just stick in the floppy and restart the computer. At the A: prompt type in
FDISK to start the partition program and after you have partitioned the hard
drive you use FORMAT to format the partition which will have the operating
system. The other partitions can be formated using the operating system once
it is installed.

Second you can use an existing operating system to format and partition
another drive. I think the partioning feature is included with Windows 2000
and up only. You just install the drive you want to format and partition as
the secondary drive and bootup to windows. Next you go into Control Panel
and choose the Administrative Tools option. Then you click on Disk
Management and the rest is pretty much self explanatory.

Third you can use the operating system cd to partition and format a hard
drive. This will work with Windows 2000 and up only. You just stick in the
cdrom and reboot the computer. Make sure you have the cdrom drive as a boot
device in you cmos settings. Then boot to the cdrom and go from there.

Hope this helps out!

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