Partitioning A Drive

[Scott]

I'm partitioning an external hard drive that's connected to my Win XP
machine. I set an 80GB partition for XP (NTFS). When I tried to allocate
the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition (for my Win98 machines), FAT32
was not an option, until I reduced the partition size to 20 GB. I'm using
XP's Disk Management. Is there a maximum limitation of FAT32 partition
size?

Thanks!
Scott

 

[Rich Barry]

Scott, if you do it that way I think it's a 32G limit for FAT32.
Otherwise, if you use fdisk the FAT32 Partitions can be greater ( 2
terabytes ) http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313348

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I'm partitioning an external hard drive that's connected to my
Win XP
machine. I set an 80GB partition for XP (NTFS). When I tried
to
allocate the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition (for my
Win98
machines), FAT32 was not an option, until I reduced the
partition
size to 20 GB. I'm using XP's Disk Management. Is there a
maximum
limitation of FAT32 partition size?

Not exactly. But XP does have a limit on how large a FAT32
partition it can *create*. It's 32GB.

However it has no problem *using* a larger FAT32 partition if
created externally.

 

[Scott]

In

Not exactly. But XP does have a limit on how large a FAT32
partition it can *create*. It's 32GB.

However it has no problem *using* a larger FAT32 partition if
created externally.

Ken,

OK, so I went to a Win98 machine, and using a bootdisk, booted to the
A Drive. Then I hit FDISK. The idea was to format an additional partition
with FAT32. However, even with me external drive turned on and connected
(yes, the USB drivers have been installed), all FDISK could see was the
primary C drive and not the external drive. Is there another way to format
an external drive under Win98? In Windows, I can't see the drive, since
it hasn't been formatted yet.

Thanks!
Scott

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Ken,

OK, so I went to a Win98 machine, and using a bootdisk, booted
to the
A Drive. Then I hit FDISK. The idea was to format an
additional
partition with FAT32. However, even with me external drive
turned on
and connected (yes, the USB drivers have been installed), all
FDISK
could see was the primary C drive and not the external drive.
Is
there another way to format an external drive under Win98? In
Windows, I can't see the drive, since it hasn't been formatted
yet.

Is this a USB drive? Sorry, I don't know anything about fdisking
USB drives in Windows 98, or even whether it's possible. You
might need to use dsomething like Partition Magic. Perhaps
someone else here has an answer for you.

 

[GreenieLeBrun]

Ken,

OK, so I went to a Win98 machine, and using a bootdisk, booted to the
A Drive. Then I hit FDISK. The idea was to format an additional partition
with FAT32. However, even with me external drive turned on and connected
(yes, the USB drivers have been installed), all FDISK could see was the
primary C drive and not the external drive. Is there another way to format
an external drive under Win98? In Windows, I can't see the drive, since
it hasn't been formatted yet.

Thanks!
Scott

Remove the drive from its enclosure and connect it to the secondary IDE
bus on your W98 machine then try to FDISK the unallocated space.

 

[Scott]

In

Is this a USB drive? Sorry, I don't know anything about fdisking
USB drives in Windows 98, or even whether it's possible. You
might need to use dsomething like Partition Magic. Perhaps
someone else here has an answer for you.

Yes, it's a USB drive. Apparently, a USB can't be detected while running
FDISK in DOS mode. So, it looks like I'll just set up 32 GB partitions for
the various Win98 drive image backups.

Scott

 

[Scott]

Remove the drive from its enclosure and connect it to the secondary IDE
bus on your W98 machine then try to FDISK the unallocated space.

Greenie,

Yes, I guess I could to that, but I'd rather not open the external drive. I'll just
go back to Plan A, and set up individual 32GB partitions, using WinXP Disk Management.
This also will work.

Scott

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I'm partitioning an external hard drive that's connected to my Win XP
machine. I set an 80GB partition for XP (NTFS). When I tried to
allocate the rest of the drive as a FAT32 partition (for my Win98
machines), FAT32 was not an option, until I reduced the partition
size to 20 GB. I'm using XP's Disk Management. Is there a maximum
limitation of FAT32 partition size?

Format larger than 32GB FAT32 within Windows XP with this utility:
http://www.mager.org/mkdosfs/