Windows XP Unattended and Custom Partitions?

A

AreEss

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 5, 2005
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Okay, this one has had me scratching my head for ages, and I cannot figure it out for the life of me. So maybe one of you knows.

As drives get bigger and bigger, I need to do a smaller C: partition, then a D: storage partition on the OS RAID1. Okay, fine. No problem. I do this initially with some other utility, then turn off AutoPartition. But that's an extra step, and if I have to replace the customer's drive, part of rebuild is walking them through setting up the partitions again. Wasted time, in my opinion.

So the question is; how do I set up custom partitions in an Unattended Install? I want to have X MB/GB of C:, and the remainder as D:. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks!
 
It depends on how you're doing your installs. If you want to chat about this in PMs, I might be able to give you a hand. I built a unattended installation system that sounds a lot like what you're doing. If you are using some type of pre-installation environment, it might be possible to do.

The unattend.txt file supports some basic partitioning functions, too. However, if you're laying the CD down on the hard drive before you do your partitioning, you might be limited.



How are you initiating your unattended build? How are you doing the initial partitioning?
 
Demon;

I'm doing a pretty simple method, no sysprep dancing around or anything. Basically, I build a "basic" CD which only adds on the drivers, and removes certain Windows components. No PXE and no OEM Preinstall. So, nope, no ConvertNTFS dancing or ExtendOEM. I boot a custom CD which has fdisk on it, lay down the initial partitions, fdisk /mbr, then boot the XP CD. From there, it's Hidden Unattended install from CD with no pre-copy.

I'm thinking I should only need basic partitioning functions, since I want a fixed C: drive size and the remainder as D:, both NTFS. Worst case, I can settle for a fixed C: and walk the end-user through adding the D:. That's a lot faster anyways.
 
Desecrate said:
aw I'd like to hear to solution to this one.
Click to expand...

WinPE and Diskpart.

Diskpart script would look something like this:

Code: 
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary <size>
create partition primary
select partition 1
assign c
select partition 2
assign d

I'm pretty sure that code won't work like that, it's just off the top of my head.
 
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