Partitioning SATA Drive - just cannot do it!

[Wizzard]

I have 2 IDE drives on Asus A8V using XP Pro. Today I installed a
300gb Maxtor SATA drive which XP recognised and I quick formatted it.
It has ended up as one large 300gb NTFS Drive.

Problems:

I cannot seem to repartition it using likes of Partition magic or
Acronis Partition disk director

and

can I not format it to be part NTFS and part Fat32?

 

[jas0n]

I have 2 IDE drives on Asus A8V using XP Pro. Today I installed a
300gb Maxtor SATA drive which XP recognised and I quick formatted it.
It has ended up as one large 300gb NTFS Drive.

Problems:

I cannot seem to repartition it using likes of Partition magic or
Acronis Partition disk director

and

can I not format it to be part NTFS and part Fat32?

Yes, delete the partition and re-create the two seperate ones you want,
then format each parition as either ntfs or fat32.

XP changes the size you can format a fat32 parition from within the OS,
something low, was it 36?

 

[SteveH]

I have 2 IDE drives on Asus A8V using XP Pro. Today I installed a
300gb Maxtor SATA drive which XP recognised and I quick formatted it.
It has ended up as one large 300gb NTFS Drive.

Problems:

I cannot seem to repartition it using likes of Partition magic or
Acronis Partition disk director

I've got a 250 Gig SATA as my boot drive (2 partitions) and a 300 Gig SATA
with two partitions. I just resized the boot drive and added a 10 Gig
partition, while downloading stuff to the 300Gig drive, without any
problems. Is XP seeing your SATA drive OK?
Have you tried completely deleting the partition with PM?

and

can I not format it to be part NTFS and part Fat32?

I think so, although I'm pretty sure the FAT 32 partition has to be less
than 32Gig.

SteveH

 

[Wizzard]

Yes, delete the partition and re-create the two seperate ones you want,
then format each parition as either ntfs or fat32.

XP changes the size you can format a fat32 parition from within the OS,
something low, was it 36?

It seems that XP is showing this SATA drive as a Dynamic Drive. How
can I stop XP from doing this please? The Partition Magic etc.
complain that they cannot handle this.

 

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

It seems that XP is showing this SATA drive as a Dynamic Drive. How
can I stop XP from doing this please? The Partition Magic etc.
complain that they cannot handle this.

In My Computer/Manage/Disk Management, right click the disk title in
the bottom panel where it says "Dynamic" and choose "revert to basic".
(If it's a boot disk the OS tools don't allow you to change the boot
disk from Dynamic to Basic. The only thing you can do is backup, erase
and redo from scratch.

Unless you pull the disk, pop it into another XP box, import it and
push it to Basic. I haven't tried this (only thought of it after I'd
backed-up/erased/recreated), so I don't know if it comes out bootable.
If not, you can probably fix it from the CD recovery console.)

Cheers - Jaimie

 

[Conor]

I have 2 IDE drives on Asus A8V using XP Pro. Today I installed a
300gb Maxtor SATA drive which XP recognised and I quick formatted it.
It has ended up as one large 300gb NTFS Drive.

Problems:

I cannot seem to repartition it using likes of Partition magic or
Acronis Partition disk director

Are you using versions that support 48bit LBA?

 

[hdrdtd]

From what I remember, the only time XP imposes a size limitation on a HD is
when it's the boot partition, and in that case the size limit in 32gig, and
that's only if you have XP create that partition during installation.

 

[Thomas Wendell]

Inline


--
Tumppi
=================================
Most learned on these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================

From what I remember, the only time XP imposes a size limitation on a HD
is when it's the boot partition, and in that case the size limit in 32gig,
and that's only if you have XP create that partition during installation.

No. Xp limits the size of any FAT32-partition you create ,with XP's own
tools, to 32GB , regardless of whether it's a boot partition or something
else. It can use bigger FAT32 partitions, it just doesn't allow you to
create them...

 

[Barry Watzman]

XP will not allow creation of a FAT32 partition larger than 32MB, but if
you create such a partition with non-Microsoft tools, XP will allow it
to be used (even as the boot partition).

However, there is another issue, there is a 137 gigabyte limitation on
the size of the DRIVE (the entire drive, not just a partition on the
drive) if it's an IDE drive directly on the motherboard and you are not
using a version of Windows 2000 or XP that has 48-bit LBA support.

 

[Claggy]

Why don't you go to the Maxtor Site and just use "Maxbast 4", it's very
quick at formating,
at FAT16, FAT32, NTFS (several versions), it can clone Hardrives, zero them,
and I'm
sure it can partition them as well to different sizes, you can use them on
other makes as long as you have,
at least one Maxtor/Quantum hardrive in your system, there are three
versions: a floppy version, CD image version
and a windows version.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...View+By+Category/Desktop+Storage/Maxtor+Other

Claggy.

 

[Claggy]

Sorry, i should have given you this link, as they have different diagnostic
tools (powermax) for
DiamondMax Family, Maxtor other and Quantum Family.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software Downloads

Claggy.

 

[hdrdtd]

Inline


--
Tumppi
=================================
Most learned on these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================






No. Xp limits the size of any FAT32-partition you create ,with XP's own
tools, to 32GB , regardless of whether it's a boot partition or something
else. It can use bigger FAT32 partitions, it just doesn't allow you to
create them...

Thanks. I knew that duing installation, if you have XP format the primary
partition as a fat32, it would impose a 32gig limit. I thought I remembered
that that was the only time the 32gig fat32 limit was imposed, that after XP
was installed, you could then create a fat32 partitiona of any size.

It's been too long since I used a fat32 partition. You are indeed correct.
The 32gig limit is always there.

I just happened to have a brand new 80gig drive laying around that I
installed in a XP Pro Sp2 box and tried to create a large fat32 partition.
The 32gig limit IS there. It would allow you to initially creat the larger
(80gig) fat32 partition, but it would fail during the format phase with an
error saying it was too large.

 

[Wizzard]

In My Computer/Manage/Disk Management, right click the disk title in
the bottom panel where it says "Dynamic" and choose "revert to basic".

Thanks. That did the trick.

 

[Dave J.]

XP will not allow creation of a FAT32 partition larger than 32MB, but if
you create such a partition with non-Microsoft tools, XP will allow it
to be used (even as the boot partition).

However, there is another issue, there is a 137 gigabyte limitation on
the size of the DRIVE (the entire drive, not just a partition on the
drive) if it's an IDE drive directly on the motherboard and you are not
using a version of Windows 2000 or XP that has 48-bit LBA support.

A couple of questions if you would. First off, which versions of XP will
support 48B LBA ?

Secondly, can an XP that does understand it circumvent a limitation
inherent in a particular motherboard BIOS?

Reason I ask is I use some very old MBs inside my standard systems that I
use everyday, and the only limitation which isn't fixed by stacks of ram
(apart from modern-game playing ability that is) is the problem of
addressing HDs larger than 128 GB.

Dave J.

 

[Andy]

A couple of questions if you would. First off, which versions of XP will
support 48B LBA ?

XP with Service Pack 1 or 2.

Secondly, can an XP that does understand it circumvent a limitation
inherent in a particular motherboard BIOS?

Yes. As long as the BIOS is able to boot up Windows XP, it has done
its job. Once Windows XP is running, it does not use the BIOS to
access the hard drives.

 

[Dave J.]

In MsgID<[email protected]> within
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus, 'Andy' wrote:

[xp sp1 or 2]

Yes. As long as the BIOS is able to boot up Windows XP, it has done
its job. Once Windows XP is running, it does not use the BIOS to
access the hard drives.

Thanks, that's useful given my collection of ancient motherboards.

Dave J.