WHY PARTITION YOUR DRIVE ?

In order be useable, each hard disk must have at least one partition.  A
partition is described in terms of CYLINDERS.  If you only have ONE
partition on your drive, then that partition will consist of ALL the
useable cylinders on that drive.  Theoretically you could divide a drive
into as many partitions as you have cylinders.  Practically speaking
however, you will usually want to divide your drive into no more than a
few partitions. 

If your drive is 30 megabytes or under in size, you may wish to set the
drive up as one big partition.  With bigger drives, however, you'll find
it convenient to set up two or more partitions.  By dividing your drive
into partitions, you will improve your file access time and directory
read speeds.  It will also be useful from a organizational point of view
and make your disk easier to back up.

PARTITION NAMES:

Partitions can be named almost anything.  The conventional names are
DH0:, DH1:, DH2:, etc. for each partition.  These names are the LOGICAL
DEVICE NAMES.  You could just as well use TOM, DICK, and HARRY.  Don't
type in the colon in RDPrep; the software will do that for you.  Each
partition is treated by AmigaDOS as if it were a separate hard disk even
though all the partitions may be on only one physical hard disk. 

CREATING A NEW PARTITION:

The long horizontal rectangle at the top of Screen 2 represents the total
partitionable space of your hard disk.  Displayed directly over this
rectangle is the unit number and manufacturer's name of the drive that
this partition diagram represents.  The single digit number in each
partition of this rectangle is an arbitrary identifier used only while
working from within RDPrep.  If you are creating only one partition, all
you need do is NAME the partition (type in the logical device name in the
black edit-space under the scrollable partition list and press RETURN)
unless you wish to use the default name that RDPrep gives the partition. 
To create a second partition, click on the ADD PARTITION button.  A bar
will appear, dividing the previous partition in half.  Click and drag on
the bar with the mouse pointer to resize the partition.  You may also
edit the size of the partition by typing in the number of cylinders
directly.  The partition list will translate cylinders into megabytes for
you in the SIZE column of the list.  Note that the number of kilobytes
represented by a single cylinder will vary from drive to drive.
  
As you move the partition divider back and forth, note that if you veer
off the partition rectangle, the partition bar "snaps back" to its
previous setting -- this acts as a cancel or undo operation if you decide
you don't like the parameters you set up.  Also, if you want to move the
partition divider in one-cylinder jumps, just use the mouse to select the
partition you want to "shrink" and click repeatedly in the partition --
you'll see the divider nearest the pointer move towards it in one
cylinder decrements.

Once you have two or more partitions set up, just clicking on the
partition space will illuminate it in orange and make that partition the
current partition for editing.  To delete a partition, just click on the
DEL PARTITION button, and the currently selected partition will merge
with the partition to its left.

DESIGNATING YOUR BOOT PARTITION:

One of your partitions on one of your hard disks should be your BOOT
partition.  You determine this by how you've set the BOOTPRI (Boot
Priority) parameter in Screen 2 for that partition.  Basically, designate
your boot partition as having a BOOTPRI of 3 or 4 and give all other
partitions a BOOTPRI of 0.  Stay within the range -127 through 4 for all
partitions.

REMEMBER:

After you've set up your partition information in RDPrep, you must go to
Screen 1 and write that information into the Rigid Disk Block area of the
currently selected disk (you should also back up that information into a
MountFile on a floppy disk before exiting RDPrep).