big_gie Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 PQDisk is a scriptable version of PowerQuest® PartitionMagic®. It is intended for use by PC configuration centers and corporations that need to configure large numbers of PCs. Unlike PartitionMagic, PQDisk has no interactive user interface. It uses ASCII text script files based on the PartitionMagic Pro scripting language to specify operations that create and manipulate the computer?s hard disk partitions. PQDisk provides optional log and error files and can display script execution progress status. The log file details the operation of each script command. Error files contain only the error number so it can be easily parsed for automated processes.You can use PQDisk to create, format, copy, move, resize and delete partitions. Additional operations are also available to display information about partitions, test bad sectors, analyze clusters, convert file system types, and change a partition?s status (active, hidden).To allow better control over PQDisk?s behavior, many of the constraints built into the retail version of PartitionMagic are disabled in PQDisk. For example when a primary partition is hidden or unhidden with PQDisk, other primary partitions are not affected, whereas if you set one primary partition active with PartitionMagic, all other primary partitions on that hard disk are hidden.PQDisk uses a three-step process to perform partition operations. The first step selects the physical disk where the partition is located, the second step is to select a free space or defined partition, and the third is to select the operation. You can also specify various options for each operation.PQDisk functions on computer systems with hardware-based RAID systems. It will not function on software-based RAID systems.PQDisk v7.01 is part of the PowerQuest Deploy Toolkit v2.51, witch is part of the PowerQuest DeployCenter Library 2.0... h**p://www.powerquest.com/deploycenterlibrary/calling:pqdisk /CMD=formatcd.txt /DSS /LOG=pmdisk.log /IHFWill format my C:, D: and E: as NTFS... Just put it on a boot floppy (I call it via CDShell)PQDisk is ~500 kbSelect Drive 1Select Partition CCheckFormat /FS=NTFS /Label="Windows"Select Partition DCheckFormat /FS=NTFS /Label="Prog"Select Partition ECheckFormat /FS=NTFS /Label="Data" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmith1 Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Why not just use Microsofts DiskPart tool?It's free.Creating DiskPart Scripts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big_gie Posted March 21, 2004 Author Share Posted March 21, 2004 It doesnt work in dos... or does it?at last when I tryed it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmith1 Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 It works in Windows PE/BartPE.Why are you still using DOS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big_gie Posted March 21, 2004 Author Share Posted March 21, 2004 thanx evilvoice... But dos doesnt like ntfs drives so there is no C: d: and e: for me...Ausmith: I'm using dos boot floppies (Win98). Those are included with my cd because they are much more small than PE... and just to format a drive I'm not sure I need a full cd wich takes 5 minutes to load... I'm actually using Acronis Partition Expert and since I do many testing in vmware, I was looking for a way to automate the formating. The format from the win98 disk doesnt support ntfs () and XP's one can't run in dos... (**** dos..) Will continue my search for something Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmith1 Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 I see your point, it all depends on what you are trying to do I guess...I recently saw some DOS utilities that I think would do most of what you are wanting in IBM's xSeries Scripting ToolKit.The fdisk32 & format32 utilities sound like they would do the trick.The hwdetect utility in the toolkit is also a very useful utility... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evilvoice Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 ausmith...cant format ntfs with that...what about ranish...dont they have freeware? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmith1 Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Why not just use the Filesystem=ConvertNTFSline in Winnt.sif?Personally I'd be somewhat (make that extremely) wary of using any utility that didn't come from Microsoft to create an NTFS partition. NTFS data structures are barely documented and all the third party utilities for it were reverse engineeered. That's why the Linux NTFS drivers are typically read only by default...So to be 100% safe I'd recommend formatting with FAT/FAT32 (which is very well documented and well understood) and letting Windows handle the filesystem conversion.I guess that my opinions on this are somewhat colored by the fact that I build unattended install CD for servers and I can't afford to have something that "should work OK" on there. For what I do it just has to work 100% of the time. You wouldn't like it very much if the X-Ray generators computer controller was to crash and give you a lethal radiation dose the next time you go to the hospital, now would you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XtremeMaC Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 pm8 multi boot style works for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big_gie Posted March 21, 2004 Author Share Posted March 21, 2004 @Ausmith1Its just that I don't want everytime to do this... Its just for testing and I think a cmd line tool will be faster than a gui one... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IcemanND Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Norton Ghost includes a similar utility, dos and 32-bit versions.Intro to Gdisk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big_gie Posted March 21, 2004 Author Share Posted March 21, 2004 it doesnt seems to support NTFS...:/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauledavey Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Do a search on the web for AEFDISK.EXEA good free util that will let you do what u want to do , and is scriptable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPamplin Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Hey there,I do the exact same thing! I really do prefer a small 1.44MB boot floppy with Win98 DOS files and my RAR32 DOS decompressor. Then I load up a 700MB RAR archive on the CD and that has everything I need for a complete install.I would use the ConvertNTFS flag in WINNT.SIF if I was assured that I could reformat the partition as FAT32 if I had to redo the install cycle. I think AEFDisk 2.1 (free) may do this, but I've not gotten around to adding this to my scripts yet. It's really small though (18k). Here's a snippet from the readme: AEFDISK is a DOS based, command line driven disk partitioning utility. With AEFDISK you can: - Create primary, extended and logical partitions - Delete primary, extended and logical partitions (and wipe them) - Format FAT partitions - Hide and unhide FAT, NTFS/HPFS partitions - Activate/deactivate a partition - Show the partition table - Show characteristics of harddisks - Install the standard MBR loader to a harddisk - Save or restore the MBR - Set up hundreds of harddisks with a simple batch file on a floppy - and more...It can set up partitions for you, but adding partitions requires a reboot. If you assume the hard disk already has a partition available, you could use AEFDisk in a script as such:aefdisk 1 /formatfat:1:Hard_Disk (formats the first partition on drive 1 as FAT32 and names it Hard_Disk)Go to http://www.aefdisk.com/ and see if you can get it going. It's a DOS utility, small, and free - why not try it and shoot me a message when you get it working. Like I said, I've downloaded it but I haven't gotten it going yet, but it seems like what you need.JP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big_gie Posted March 21, 2004 Author Share Posted March 21, 2004 thanks JPamplin.Just tryed the switch you gave me:A:\>aefdisk 1 /formatfat:1:WinFormatting FAT partition...Error: cannot format, not FAT type.There were errors, quitting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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