If you plan on shrinking an existing partition, then this is not for you. This tutorial assumes that you are starting out with either a fresh HD, or one that you plan on wiping the data from
Easy, (where have we seen this before?)
1) Login as root
2) open a term if necessary
3) run "fdisk /dev/hda"
(we ARE talking about /dev/hda here, aren't we?)
4) hit "p" to show existing partitions.
5) hit "d" to delete these partitions (if any).
Now is a good time to reflect on things like
DO I REALLY WANNA DO THIS?
Note: there is nothing that prevents you from deleting only the partitions that you don't want, or not deleting anything but just simply changing the partition type of the partition that you want changed to FAT32.
But, you
HAVE to be sure of which partition you want to work with, making a mistake here will distroy the data on that partition regardless of it being the correct one or not.
So be careful.
If you deleted a partition or two, then you will want to create new one(s).
Note: there is no reason to delete a partition if the existing one is where you want it, and the size that you want. Just change the partition type in this case.
6) Hit "n" to create a new partition, follow the prompts.
7) Hit "t" to change the partition type (type "b" should do nicely)
DO THIS
8) Hit "p" to print out what you now have. Is this what you want? No changes will be made until you hit "w"
If it isn't what you want, hit 'q' and regroup.
9) Are you sure? Yes? hit "w" if so...
Now run "mkdosfs -F32 /dev/hd??" or simply fire up Windows in Win4Lin and format it there
John