I can't get third partition formatted

[gregt]

I partitioned my HD (with BootItNG) before installing Win2K. I installed
Win2K on an NTFS partition. I created another NTFS partition for the
Program Files folder. I've been trying to format a third (data) partition
with FAT 32 because I want Linux to be able to access it:

1. 5G 2K system partition - done
2. 10G Program Files partition - done
3. 60G data partition - not done
(160G HD)

After seemingly completing the formatting, the processes errors out with:
"Windows was unable to complete the format".

As per instructions from this newsgroup, I tried the MSKB procedure here
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/. I still can't format the
drive.

 

[Dave Lerner]

gregt wrote on 07/11/2005 08:24 PM:

I partitioned my HD (with BootItNG) before installing Win2K. I installed
Win2K on an NTFS partition. I created another NTFS partition for the
Program Files folder. I've been trying to format a third (data) partition
with FAT 32 because I want Linux to be able to access it:

1. 5G 2K system partition - done
2. 10G Program Files partition - done
3. 60G data partition - not done
(160G HD)

After seemingly completing the formatting, the processes errors out with:
"Windows was unable to complete the format".

As per instructions from this newsgroup, I tried the MSKB procedure here
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098/EN-US/. I still can't format the
drive.

According to this, Windows can't format a FAT32 patition larger than
32G, but Windows can access a larger partition once it's formatted:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_tdrn.asp

I have BootItNG also (I dual boot Win2k and Linux), but I don't remember
whether it can format FAT32 partitions. If not, you may be able to
format the partition with Linux.

 

[gregt]

Thanks. W2K formatted FAT32 at 25G no problem (BootItNT didn't give me the
option). Assuming W2K can access the Linux file system, I'll try creating
larger partitions that way.