Unattended Partition Issues

[Toddy86]

Hi All

I have googled this issue and cannot find any solution... yet.

The Scenario:

My hard drive has 1 partition which is about 25% of the total space (formated as NTFS) which I want to deploy Windows too (automatically of course). The other 75% is unallocated at this time.

The Problem:

Depsite playing around with difference settings Windows seems to not want to install to my partition, instead choosing to format the unallocated space and install windows there.

So when Windows boots up i have an E: drive formatted as NTFS with the 75% that 'was' unallocated' and in disk management you can see my other partition which is simly NTFS (Health), no drive letter or anything....

Any ideas?

I just dont get why it would do this.

[AverageJoe]

I'd also like to know how to do this. Using the search function brings up tons of unresolved threads, some dating back to '04, surely someone has figured it out by now! In addition, I'd like to know how to make the Install Disk create partitions and assign drive letters. I have heard Bart PE can help with this, but I cannot figure out how.

For example; Disk is 100g, I'd like the Install Disk to create the following partitions C:=20G, P:=50G, R:=30G

Thanks in advance.

Edited December 24, 2008 by AverageJoe

[paraffin]

In my unattended install I use a bat file to run the following commands

DISKPART creates the partition and assigns the Drive Letter

FORMAT - well formats the drive and labels it.

There are other commands for diskpart that you can use to specify the size of the partition.

I use this method because its easy and I know that the servers we install onto are always the same BL460c's.

I do not automatically create the Install partition as this is very early on so you don't have to wait ages for the only bit of interaction.

Also for this to work at all the disks need to be in a RAW state

example bat file

DISKPART /s %CDROM%\AUTO\Partition\createpart.s"

ECHO Y | FORMAT E: /FS:NTFS /Q /V:Applications

EXIT

example diskpart script

select disk 0

create partition primary

assign letter=E