Hey guys,

I was hoping to get some expert advice on the best way to prep my system before install. I am looking to find a way to create a single large FAT32 volume in 4k clusters and with the cvtarea switch so that I am ready to convert to NTFS when the time comes.

I have played around with oformat and cvtarea and there are so many steps and not possible to script well using microsofts way. I like AEFDISK but you have to but it if you want the /cvtarea function.

Freedos seems to do it ok using format c: /a /q /u /z:seriously then following up after a reboot to use microsoft cvtarea c:\cvtarea.tmp 500 MB /contig /firstcluster 3 gb

But this process is 4 reboots. One for fdisk wipe, one for fdisk create, one for format, and one for cvtarea.

AEFDISK seems like it can do it all in one shot but you have to buy it. Anyone played with gdisk? I have a copy of ghost 8 but not sure how to use gdisk to do all this.

Or anyone suggest a better way?

My image needs to stay fat32 because we are always adding and removing files, drivers etc to our ghost image using ghost explorer. After we deploy we use the convert command which converts fat32 to NTFS in like 5 seconds as long as you format using 4k cluster and cvtarea. Otherwise convert takes like 25 minutes.

Any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated.

Dennis

Have you tried booting to perhaps BartPE and running diskpart? There are a lot of option that may allow you to do what your looking for...

DiskPart /S MakeDisk.txt > logfile.txt 

type logfile.txt

echo Y|format c: /fs:NTFS /q /V:CDrive
rem echo Y|format d: /fs:NTFS /q /V:DDrive || echo Y | format e: /fs:NTFS /q /V:DDrive

echo Y|format d: /fs:NTFS /q /V:DDrive

select disk 0
Clean 

create partition primary size=15005
assign 
active 

create partition extended
create partition logical
assign

Exit

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/us...en/diskpart.asp

R

I do have a PE disk up and running and have diskpart but so far am not able to format with 4k clusters in fat32 and diskpart does not support a function like cvtarea.

Dennis

In the XP Deploy Kit there are two utilities named oformat.com and cvtarea.exe which should take care of your format needs, if in BartPE (or WinPE) you can use DiskPart to partition the disk as you please, then run oformat then cvtarea as listed below (taking MS's reccommendations into account)

oformat.com C: /a:8 /Q

cvtarea.exe C:\cvtarea.tmp 10 %disk /contig /firstcluster 3

(remember to change c: to whatever drive you need to do this to)

This should accomplish your desired outcome.

I personally ghosted an image of my drive configuration and just made sure to purchase the same size drive as my initial setup. Then it is a one-step process of ghosting the image perfectly into place.

Hope this helps, (and that you are still checking this forum)