A Related Maxtor External HD Problem

[Guest]

I'm afraid that I can only share in your misery around this problem. I think
that our problems are related.

I also have a Maxtor One Touch External Hard Disk (200GB with USB 2.0) that
I would like to use for both a Mac (OS X10.4 Tiger) and a Windows (XP Home)
computer. In my case I'd like to create a single large partition to hold a
large and growing collection of pictures and video clips. Ideally either
computer should be able to read or write to the external hard disk.

Option 1: When I format the disk with XP in NTFS, the Mac can read but not
write to the HD. Actually with older versions of Mac OS (I tried 10.2) you
can't even read NTFS.

Option 2: When I format the disk with the Mac, the XP machine sees the disk
as a FAT32 formatted volume. I tried copying a few files and it crashed the
hard disk in less than five minutes. Neither computer would recognize it.

Option 3: Reformat the disk with FAT32 file system using either an older
Windows operating system or a third party utility. Actually I haven't tried
this option yet. I was hoping to learn something about clusters and block
sizes that would sensibly use the disk space before I start to populate it.

Hope someone has better insights to either or both of our problems.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Creating a FAT32 partition in XP has two limitations! 1) FAT32 partitions
can only be created to a maximum of 32GB with XP's Disk Management (do not
know why this limit?) and 2) File sizes on FAT32 can not be greater than 4GB
each.

 

[Anna]

Creating a FAT32 partition in XP has two limitations! 1) FAT32 partitions
can only be created to a maximum of 32GB with XP's Disk Management (do not
know why this limit?) and 2) File sizes on FAT32 can not be greater than
4GB each.

Mike:
First of all, let me say that I've had so little experience with a Mac that
the last thing I should presume to do is to try to give any advice involving
that computer and its operating system.

However, in your Option 3 you mention the possibility of formatting a USB
external hard drive with the FAT32 system. I'm assuming from your comment
that by doing so the data on that EHD will be accessible to the Mac and
thereby be useful to you. If that assumption is wrong, then read no
further...

But if it's right...

You can, as you surmise, format FAT32 that 200 GB external HD with a
bootable DOS floppy disk, e.g., a Win9x/Me Startup disk. I assume you would
know how to use the FDISK & FORMAT commands that would need to be invoked.
Understand that you could *not* accomplish that partitioning/formatting of
your EHD in an XP environment using the DOS bootable floppy. Under those
circumstances DOS will not (unfortunately) see an external device. If you
could remove the HD from its enclosure and install it (temporarily) as an
internal drive in your computer, then you could use the aforementioned
procedure. But I believe that's not practical in your situation because your
unit may be a kind of one-piece sealed affair where the drive is not readily
available for removal. And even if it is there may be warranty issues to
contend with.

While you can partition/format your EHD using XP's Disk Management utility,
I assume you're aware of Yve's comment that XP is unable (*unwilling* is
more like it!) to create a FAT32 partition > 32 GB. That, of course, is the
dilemma here. And there is that 4 GB limitation that Yves also mentions re
moving/copying files in a FAT32 environment. I don't know if that's
particularly significant to you inasmuch as (I assume) you'll be working
with large photo & video files. BTW, don't get overly concerned with cluster
sizes and such with respect to working with an external hard drive. It's of
little or no import when you're using that device simply for storage as
apparently is your intention.

There is another way you can create a single FAT32 partition for your 200 GB
EHD without removing it from its enclosure and within an XP environment. The
process involves invoking a Linux-developed file (freely available) within
an XP environment. It's a fairly simple straightforward process. If you or
others are interested, please so indicate and I'll detail the steps.
Anna

 

[Guest]

Mike:
First of all, let me say that I've had so little experience with a Mac that
the last thing I should presume to do is to try to give any advice involving
that computer and its operating system.

However, in your Option 3 you mention the possibility of formatting a USB
external hard drive with the FAT32 system. I'm assuming from your comment
that by doing so the data on that EHD will be accessible to the Mac and
thereby be useful to you. If that assumption is wrong, then read no
further...

But if it's right...

You can, as you surmise, format FAT32 that 200 GB external HD with a
bootable DOS floppy disk, e.g., a Win9x/Me Startup disk. I assume you would
know how to use the FDISK & FORMAT commands that would need to be invoked.
Understand that you could *not* accomplish that partitioning/formatting of
your EHD in an XP environment using the DOS bootable floppy. Under those
circumstances DOS will not (unfortunately) see an external device. If you
could remove the HD from its enclosure and install it (temporarily) as an
internal drive in your computer, then you could use the aforementioned
procedure. But I believe that's not practical in your situation because your
unit may be a kind of one-piece sealed affair where the drive is not readily
available for removal. And even if it is there may be warranty issues to
contend with.

While you can partition/format your EHD using XP's Disk Management utility,
I assume you're aware of Yve's comment that XP is unable (*unwilling* is
more like it!) to create a FAT32 partition > 32 GB. That, of course, is the
dilemma here. And there is that 4 GB limitation that Yves also mentions re
moving/copying files in a FAT32 environment. I don't know if that's
particularly significant to you inasmuch as (I assume) you'll be working
with large photo & video files. BTW, don't get overly concerned with cluster
sizes and such with respect to working with an external hard drive. It's of
little or no import when you're using that device simply for storage as
apparently is your intention.

There is another way you can create a single FAT32 partition for your 200 GB
EHD without removing it from its enclosure and within an XP environment. The
process involves invoking a Linux-developed file (freely available) within
an XP environment. It's a fairly simple straightforward process. If you or
others are interested, please so indicate and I'll detail the steps.
Anna

Anna & Yves,
Thanks to you both for your input. If it means that I can swap the external
200GB HD between the Mac and XP computers, then I am definitely willing to
live with filesizes <4GB. Anna is correct that I'm unwilling to open the HD
case, mount it as an internal IDE just to run the DOS formatting, so I'd be
happy to get some details on a third party (Linux) tool to perform the
format. Hopefully the tool will run in the XP environment (is that asking
too much?)

One remaining aspect of this puzzle is an explanation to my Option 2
failure. Why would a Linux FAT32 formatting be different to the FAT32 format
that was made with the Mac X10.4 OS? Are there important options to be
selected when formating FAT32? Even without answers, I'd be happy to give it
a try and report on my results. I haven't started to populate the new EHD
yet, so I'm still willing to crash it a few times, in the name of educating
myself.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Anna]

Anna & Yves,
Thanks to you both for your input. If it means that I can swap the
external
200GB HD between the Mac and XP computers, then I am definitely willing to
live with filesizes <4GB. Anna is correct that I'm unwilling to open the
HD
case, mount it as an internal IDE just to run the DOS formatting, so I'd
be
happy to get some details on a third party (Linux) tool to perform the
format. Hopefully the tool will run in the XP environment (is that asking
too much?)

One remaining aspect of this puzzle is an explanation to my Option 2
failure. Why would a Linux FAT32 formatting be different to the FAT32
format
that was made with the Mac X10.4 OS? Are there important options to be
selected when formating FAT32? Even without answers, I'd be happy to give
it
a try and report on my results. I haven't started to populate the new EHD
yet, so I'm still willing to crash it a few times, in the name of
educating
myself.

Thanks again for your help.

Mike:
The following is based on a paper I prepared not too long ago for a local
computer club in response to their request. I trust it will be useful to you
and others who are interested in this issue.

As most of us know, the XP operating system cannot partition/format a hard
drive in FAT32 greater than 32 GB. One can use the FDISK/FORMAT commands on
a DOS bootable floppy disk (such as a Win9x/Me Startup Disk) to
partition/format an internal hard drive of virtually any size in FAT32.
However, since the FDISK command will not "see" a USB external hard drive,
that drive cannot be partitioned/formatted in FAT32 using the FDISK/FORMAT
commands. While a USB EHD *can* be formatted FAT32 using XP's Disk
Management utility, the 32 GB limitation will still apply.


One way to overcome this barrier is to use a Linux-developed program called
mkdosfs.exe developed by Jens-Uwe Mager (http://www.mager.org/mkdosfs/).
Refer to that site for complete details on the background of this program
and its utilization.



This program was brought to my attention some months ago by a contributor to
a Microsoft-supported newsgroup dealing with XP issues. (I failed to make a
note of his/her name). You can download the mkdosfs.zip file from Mr. Mager's
website and extract the mkdosfs.exe program file. The great advantage of
this program is that it works from *within* the XP environment. PLEASE NOTE
THIS PROGRAM IS *NOT* A CONVERSION PROGRAM IN THE SENSE THAT IT WILL CONVERT
A NTFS PARTITION TO A FAT32 PARTITION WHILE RETAINING ALL THE PARTITION'S
DATA. RATHER IT IS DESIGNED TO FORMAT THE PARTITION, SO ALL DATA ON THE
PARTITION(S) WILL BE LOST FOLLOWING THE FORMATTING.



The program is very easy to use.

1.. Install the mkdosfs.exe file (it's only 68 KB) in your C:\ root
directory.
2.. Ensure that the drive to be formatted FAT32 is not presently being
accessed at this point.
3.. Using Start > Run > cmd, and get to a C:\ prompt.
4.. Invoke the command "mkdosfs -F 32 x:" (no quotes) where x: is the
drive to be formatted.
(note the spacing within the command (mkdosfs(SPACE)-F(SPACE)32(SPACE)x: and
capitalize the "F", as shown).

MAKE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN YOUR DRIVE LETTER REFLECTS THE DRIVE TO BE
FORMATTED! YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY CONFIRMATION PROMPT AFTER INVOKING THE
COMMAND! ALL DATA ON THE FORMATTED PARTITION WILL BE LOST!

5.. Press Enter after typing the command.
6.. The formatting of your designated drive in FAT32 will take place. Two
lines of text will be displayed:
"mkdosfs 2.8 (28 Feb 2001)

Win32 port by Jens-Uwe Mager <[email protected]>"

followed by the C:\ prompt after the drive has been formatted.



In addition to the program's usefulness in overcoming the FAT32 32 GB
limitation imposed by XP as it affects your internal hard drives, another
significant advantage of this program is that you can now format a USB EHD
in FAT32 in any capacity. And do so within the XP environment.



One additional note concerning use of this program.

Let's assume you have a 160 GB USB EHD that you want to format with three
FAT32 partitions of 40 GB, 40 GB, and 80 GB. Remember that the mkdosfs
program is a formatting device; it is not designed to create partitions. So
in this example you would first use XP's Disk Management utility to
*temporarily* create the three partitions in NTFS, after which you would
simply use the mkdosfs program to format the three NTFS partitions with
FAT32 ones.



NOTE: After using the DM utility to create the NTFS partitions, reboot the
computer *before* invoking mkdosfs.


I trust this will work out for you Mike. Let us know one way or another.
Anna

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

snip>

Mike:
The following is based on a paper I prepared not too long ago for a local
computer club in response to their request. I trust it will be useful to
you and others who are interested in this issue.

As most of us know, the XP operating system cannot partition/format a hard
drive in FAT32 greater than 32 GB. One can use the FDISK/FORMAT commands
on a DOS bootable floppy disk (such as a Win9x/Me Startup Disk) to
partition/format an internal hard drive of virtually any size in FAT32.
However, since the FDISK command will not "see" a USB external hard drive,
that drive cannot be partitioned/formatted in FAT32 using the FDISK/FORMAT
commands. While a USB EHD *can* be formatted FAT32 using XP's Disk
Management utility, the 32 GB limitation will still apply.

snip

You can format an external USB drive from DOS provided you load a USB DOS
driver (DUSE). DUSE can be downloaded (search Google for DUSE). Further
'gdisk', a Symantec variant of fdisk, will allow the 32GB limit for FAT32 to
be circumvented.

 

[Anna]

snip

You can format an external USB drive from DOS provided you load a USB DOS
driver (DUSE). DUSE can be downloaded (search Google for DUSE). Further
'gdisk', a Symantec variant of fdisk, will allow the 32GB limit for FAT32
to be circumvented.

Hi Edward:
Thanks for the tip re that DUSE program (DOS driver?). Is this what you're
referring to? http://www.pocketec.net/downloads.taf?f=pockey1DosDrivers

I've never heard of it before and neither have my colleagues. Based on the
info I previously gave re the mkdosfs program, do you think that DUSE
program would be superior to that program from a user's point of view? Or is
it simply an alternative way to achieve the same objective? If you think it
might be more useful (in one way or another) than the mkdosfs program I
mentioned, might you provide some details concerning its use?

As to the Symantec Ghost GDisk utility, I recall using that program back in
Win95 days because it was superior to the then DOS FDISK utility in a number
of ways. But when MS released the newer version of FDISK circa Win98, we
stopped using it. I know Symantec continues to offer that utility in their
Ghost 2003 program. In any event, it's my impression that GDisk will "see"
*only* a fixed, internal disk and *not* a USB external drive. Am I mistaken
about that?

BTW, Symantec also includes the GDisk32.exe utility in their Ghost 2003
program which can be used in a Windows XP environment. Haven't used it but I
would suspect that utility too would not recognize an external drive.

Would you provide some details as to how you use the GDisk program to create
FAT32 partitions > 32 GB on USB external drives? Thanks.
Anna