formating 300gb drive in FAT32 format from win ME dos will it work?

[William.R.Reisen]

Is the method to use Windows ME boot disk using fdisk then format will
this do for a 300Gb drive? Or do I need some update?

 

[Harry Ohrn]

Don't use a Windows Me boot disk to format your 300 GB drive. The drive is
far too large. Use your Windows XP CD. Information on How To Format is found
here http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm

--

Harry Ohrn MS-MVP [Shell/User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp


| Is the method to use Windows ME boot disk using fdisk then format will
| this do for a 300Gb drive? Or do I need some update?

 

[Tod]

Ok, why FAT32 a 300GB hard drive ?
I believe 128GB is the largest size partition you can make with FAT32 ??
When I wanted to FAT32 a Western Digital 160GB hard drive.
I used Western Digitals DOS utilities, made two 80GB partitions.
(when using a Promise 100 TX2 controller)
..
Is the bios on your motherboard able to work with a 300GB hard drive.
How old is it ?

 

[Tim Slattery]

Is the method to use Windows ME boot disk using fdisk then format will
this do for a 300Gb drive? Or do I need some update?

If you must use FAT32 for this behemoth, this is the way to do it. But
*don't* use FAT32 for a drive this size. FAT32 is a very poor choice
for giant partitions, you will be much better off with NTFS.

 

[CJT]

If you must use FAT32 for this behemoth, this is the way to do it. But
*don't* use FAT32 for a drive this size. FAT32 is a very poor choice
for giant partitions, you will be much better off with NTFS.

Better still, put it on a Linux file server and use Samba.

 

[Tom Scales]

XP will not create a FAT32 partition greater than 32GB. Win Me will

His approach is fine, but I agree FAT32 is a poor choice.

 

[SlowJet]

Dick size is inversely proportional to FAT size.
Your computer will not run it's best based on your EGO.

Use NTFS and make the parttitons reasonable sized.

XP Pro SP2 with NTFS 4K clusters, a Small System / Boot disk and a second
Large Dynamic disk allocated in easy to use project sized VOLUMES. Password
securue Accounts.
FW, AV, and malware blocker / scanners.

Anything else called Windows is History.

SJ

 

[J. Clarke]

Is the method to use Windows ME boot disk using fdisk then format will
this do for a 300Gb drive? Or do I need some update?

Does Windows ME have 48-bit LBA support? If not then fuhgeddaboudid.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Is the method to use Windows ME boot disk using fdisk then format will
this do for a 300Gb drive? Or do I need some update?

No. That does not know about the needed 48 bit LBA. You need first to
make sure that your BIOS supports this and sees the disk as full size.
Then

If this is going to be your only disk, boot the XP CD (preferably with
at least SP1 included) and make a suitable size partition for C:.
Having the entire disk as C at that size is not sensible. I'd suggest
perhaps 20 GB. Leave the rest, install XP to it. Upgrade to SP2 with
the full version on CD.

Then Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management, select Disk
Management and look lower right for the graphic of the drive. R-click
in Unallocated space and create Partition (or multiple ones)

 

[Lil' Dave]

Is the method to use Windows ME boot disk using fdisk then format will
this do for a 300Gb drive? Or do I need some update?

I used the native WD tools to partition my 200GB hard drive into two logical
partitions. Formatted sizes ended up being 99.9 GB and 86.2 GB. They are
FAT32.

The same hard drive is connected and jumpered as slave to a 80 GB WD
jumpered master. Both are connected to the onboard primary ide connector on
the AOpen motherboard. I use the 200 GB HD strictly for image backups.

The PC has 3 installed operating systems. Two instances of 98SE and 1
instance of XP HE. For defragmentation purposes, I use Diskeeper home
edition. Still waiting for problems to occur regarding 98SE and scandisk.
Nothing has happened since installing this HD some 5 months ago.

 

[Rock]

I used the native WD tools to partition my 200GB hard drive into two logical
partitions. Formatted sizes ended up being 99.9 GB and 86.2 GB. They are
FAT32.

The same hard drive is connected and jumpered as slave to a 80 GB WD
jumpered master. Both are connected to the onboard primary ide connector on
the AOpen motherboard. I use the 200 GB HD strictly for image backups.

The PC has 3 installed operating systems. Two instances of 98SE and 1
instance of XP HE. For defragmentation purposes, I use Diskeeper home
edition. Still waiting for problems to occur regarding 98SE and scandisk.
Nothing has happened since installing this HD some 5 months ago.

Imaging to a second hard drive in the same system is not the safest way
to go. Something could take out the whole system. Better to image to a
removable drive.

 

[Al Dykes]

Imaging to a second hard drive in the same system is not the safest way
to go. Something could take out the whole system. Better to image to a
removable drive.

Or over a 100Mb LAN to a second system.

It's also a bad idea to overwrite your only backup. If your main
system's disk dies during a backup your f****d.

A product like Acronis (and several others) lets you save disk images
to internal disks, or over a LAN at 3-1 compression (or more), so you
can save several generations of backup on the target backup disk.

For w2k/XP the standard backup (ntbackup) can do the same thing, and
it's free. Restoring to a bare disk, after a failure, is a bit of a
pain if you've never done it.

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

How much data is on your second partition?

I used the native WD tools to partition my 200GB hard drive into two
logical
partitions. Formatted sizes ended up being 99.9 GB and 86.2 GB. They are
FAT32.

The same hard drive is connected and jumpered as slave to a 80 GB WD
jumpered master. Both are connected to the onboard primary ide connector
on
the AOpen motherboard. I use the 200 GB HD strictly for image backups.

The PC has 3 installed operating systems. Two instances of 98SE and 1
instance of XP HE. For defragmentation purposes, I use Diskeeper home
edition. Still waiting for problems to occur regarding 98SE and scandisk.
Nothing has happened since installing this HD some 5 months ago.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Imaging to a second hard drive in the same system is not the safest way
to go. Something could take out the whole system. Better to image to a
removable drive.

How did I know this crap was coming, and the drones would sing out their
songs... I tried to keep it short and meaningful regarding the question
orginally posed..

Am aware of that. The images on that HD are for onboard recovery. I also
copy the entire 80 GB hard drive to another same make/model, and its
removable. Its only inserted for the copy.

 

[Rock]

Lil' Dave wrote:

How did I know this crap was coming, and the drones would sing out their
songs... I tried to keep it short and meaningful regarding the question
orginally posed..

Am aware of that. The images on that HD are for onboard recovery. I also
copy the entire 80 GB hard drive to another same make/model, and its
removable. Its only inserted for the copy.

lol..could have avoided it by not saying what the 200 GB HD was for.

 

[willbill]

formating 300gb drive in FAT32 format from win ME dos will it work?

Is the method to use Windows ME boot disk using fdisk then format will
this do for a 300Gb drive? Or do I need some update?

for whatever reason, the win ME fdisk program won't
format a FAT32 partition to that size

however, a FAT32 partition can be formatted to greater than
1,000+ gb (source: System Commander ver. 8 user manual)

you'll need a 3rd party format program, plus a recent mobo
(or disk adapter), i.e. new(er) hardware, with recent bios

bill