IS IT A RARE CASE???

[KUNAL K]

Can anyone please answer me that why out of 2 HDDs in my
system(WDC-40GB and Seagate-20GB),the seagate HD is not
being formatted in DOS using format command **(format is
getting terminated after 37 % is completed,displaying a
message "drive not ready")**, but it is formatable from
within Windows explorer by rightclick on partitions &
format.. While the other HD(WDC) is formatable both in
DOS & WINDOWS.. Why is it so that i cant format the
seagate HD partitions from DOS using FORMAT command, while
the other HD (WDC) doesn't have any problem like that???
What is IDE full form??

 

[BigJIm]

you need to partition the drive first
then format it.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

That has nothing to do with it actually. The problem is that you are
trying to format a 40 GB Hard Drive to FAT16 or FAT32. You cannot do
this. This is an actual limitation of the filing system. You will need
to format the 40 GB Hard Drive as NTFS or partition it so that one drive
is under the 32 GB limit and the other using the rest of the space.
Here is a good explination:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q184006&

Also, here is an excellent source for filing system/hardware limitations
on Hard Drives:
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/drive_size_barrier_limitations.htm

 

[Nathan McNulty]

My fault, I looked at the header and thought you were running Win2000
(thinking you were formatting from a DOS box). I guess that was the web
interface. This limitation may still exist in the DOS environment
(looked but didn't find), but using Windows 98 I know it is possible to
format FAT32 up to 127 GB. FAT32 supports drives up to 2 terabytes in
size. XP Setup will not format higher than 32GB for FAT32 though either.

 

[Wislu Plethora]

-----Original Message-----
That has nothing to do with it actually. The problem is that you are
trying to format a 40 GB Hard Drive to FAT16 or FAT32. You cannot do
this. This is an actual limitation of the filing system. You will need
to format the 40 GB Hard Drive as NTFS or partition it so that one drive
is under the 32 GB limit and the other using the rest of the space.
Here is a good explination:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN- US;Q184006&

Also, here is an excellent source for filing system/hardware limitations
on Hard Drives:
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/drive_size_barri er_limitations.htm

The OP is having trouble formatting the 20gb drive,
numbnuts.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Well thanks for pointing that out so nicely. All I can say is stick
with formatting it in Windows if DOS won't. Run SeaTools on the drive
and make sure it passes the tests.