Win XP Can't See FAT32 Format

[Guest]

Attempting to create three FAT32 partitions on a 250GB external FW drive (Maxtor 5000xt). Can create the partitions using Fdisk and Format under Win98. The partitions function properly in Win98. Win XP home recognizes all the partitions and logical drives but only recognizes the first as formatted. The other all appear as unformatted. I have tried many variations (all primary partitions, one extended with three logical, smaller first partitions, etc...) but the result is always the same. Mac OSX sees the same thing by the way

Any idea why Win XP can't see the second partition/logical drive (and third or fourth) on such a drive

Again, Maxtor 5000xt, external FW drive partitioned and formatted under Win98SE then mounted on Win XP Home system. I have tried mounting as IDE 2.0, by the way, with same result. FW chain is Adaptec DuoConnect

Thanks
tod

 

[Bob Harris]

The intial release of XP can not handle drives larger than about 127Gig.
That is the whole drive, not the largest single partition. This was fixed
in SP-1. However, even with SP-1 you must manully invoke something called
48-bit LBA to see all of the disk. See the following link:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013

Attempting to create three FAT32 partitions on a 250GB external FW drive

(Maxtor 5000xt). Can create the partitions using Fdisk and Format under
Win98. The partitions function properly in Win98. Win XP home recognizes
all the partitions and logical drives but only recognizes the first as
formatted. The other all appear as unformatted. I have tried many
variations (all primary partitions, one extended with three logical, smaller
first partitions, etc...) but the result is always the same. Mac OSX sees
the same thing by the way.

Any idea why Win XP can't see the second partition/logical drive (and

third or fourth) on such a drive.

Again, Maxtor 5000xt, external FW drive partitioned and formatted under

Win98SE then mounted on Win XP Home system. I have tried mounting as IDE
2.0, by the way, with same result. FW chain is Adaptec DuoConnect.