reformat 200 GB FAT32 external usb2 hard drive

[Lynn McGuire]

How does one reformat a 200 GB FAT32 external usb2 hard drive ?

The format utility in Windows XP Pro says that the drive is too big.

The drive came formatted FAT32 from Western Digital.

Thanks,
Lynn McGuire

 

[Tod]

My two cents,
Try getting Western Digitals hard drive utilities from their web site.
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#dlgtools

 

[Ian Roberts]

How does one reformat a 200 GB FAT32 external usb2 hard drive ?

The format utility in Windows XP Pro says that the drive is too big.

The drive came formatted FAT32 from Western Digital.

Thanks,
Lynn McGuire

Have a look at Powerquests Partition Magic - I'm not sure off hand if it can
see external USB drives but it would be worth a look to find out - see...
www.Powerquest.com

HTH

Ian

 

[Tom Scales]

Plug it into a Windows 98 machine and reformat it. XP doesn't allow (in
FDISK or FORMAT) Fat32 > 32GB but DOES run with it fine.

Or format NTFS.

Tom

 

[Will Dormann]

Plug it into a Windows 98 machine and reformat it. XP doesn't allow (in
FDISK or FORMAT) Fat32 > 32GB but DOES run with it fine.

Or just use a Win98 bootdisk. No reason to move the drive.
http://bootdisk.com/


-WD

 

[Rod Speed]

Or just use a Win98 bootdisk. No reason to move the drive.
http://bootdisk.com/

If that will actually see a USB external drive properly.

 

[Will Dormann]

If that will actually see a USB external drive properly.

Yeah there are bootdisks there with USB support that should work fine.


-WD

 

[Toshi1873]

[email protected]>,
(e-mail address removed) says...

How does one reformat a 200 GB FAT32 external usb2 hard drive ?

The format utility in Windows XP Pro says that the drive is too big.

The drive came formatted FAT32 from Western Digital.

Thanks,
Lynn McGuire

Any particular reason that you don't just format it as
NTFS? Or do you need to access the drive using older
Win95/98 machines?

 

[Lynn McGuire]

Any particular reason that you don't just format it as

NTFS? Or do you need to access the drive using older
Win95/98 machines?

Just paranoid. I think that FAT32 is more universal but less
efficient than NTFS. I'll probably have to give up and format
it to NTFS one of these days.

Thanks,
Lynn

 

[Ohaya]

Just paranoid. I think that FAT32 is more universal but less
efficient than NTFS. I'll probably have to give up and format
it to NTFS one of these days.

Thanks,
Lynn

Hi,

I use BootitNG, and just got my drive into a USB2 enclosure, so I posted on
their news server a couple of days ago, and they said that I should be able
to do the partition work and formatting with BING
(http://www.terabyteunlimited.com).

Jim

Again, I'm not associated with BING. Just a user...

 

[Eric Gisin]

If you have Symantec/Norton Ghost, use "gdisk32 /cre /pri /for". Haven't tried
it myself.

I don't think you can run disk utilities from a DOS floppy with USB drivers.
Anyone tried?

 

[Ron Reaugh]

If you have Symantec/Norton Ghost, use "gdisk32 /cre /pri /for". Haven't tried
it myself.

I don't think you can run disk utilities from a DOS floppy with USB drivers.
Anyone tried?

I think there's a DOS Firewire solution available....Sony maybe?

 

[Toshi1873]

[email protected]>,
(e-mail address removed) says...

Just paranoid. I think that FAT32 is more universal but less
efficient than NTFS. I'll probably have to give up and format
it to NTFS one of these days.

Lessee... NTFS is a journaled file system with all sorts
of nifty extras like compression, security, encryption.

FAT32 has none of those, drop the power while it's
writing to a directory cluster and watch it all go to
hell. (I haven't used FAT32 in probably 4 years after
losing a month's worth of work due to it scrambling the
disk.) Plus, you have the 2Gb file limit which causes
problems when you work with large files.

Your choice, but I'd be more paranoid using FAT32 then
NTFS.

 

[Peter]

FAT32 has 4GB file limit, not 2GB.

[email protected]>,
(e-mail address removed) says...

Lessee... NTFS is a journaled file system with all sorts
of nifty extras like compression, security, encryption.

FAT32 has none of those, drop the power while it's
writing to a directory cluster and watch it all go to
hell. (I haven't used FAT32 in probably 4 years after
losing a month's worth of work due to it scrambling the
disk.) Plus, you have the 2Gb file limit which causes
problems when you work with large files.

Your choice, but I'd be more paranoid using FAT32 then
NTFS.

 

[Rod Speed]

(e-mail address removed) says...

Lessee... NTFS is a journaled file system with all sorts
of nifty extras like compression, security, encryption.

Which can be a problem if the brown stuff has
hit the fan and the drive has partially died etc.

FAT32 has none of those, drop the power while it's
writing to a directory cluster and watch it all go to hell.

In practice that doesnt happen much.

(I haven't used FAT32 in probably 4 years after losing
a month's worth of work due to it scrambling the disk.)

Pretty stupid not having adequate backup.

Plus, you have the 2Gb file limit which causes
problems when you work with large files.

Sure, thats a significant downside with video files.

Your choice, but I'd be more paranoid using FAT32 then NTFS.

If you're paranoid, you're best to have adequate backups.

 

[Ohaya]

Eric,

BootitNG will do this, as I posted.

Jim

 

[chrisv]

I think there's a DOS Firewire solution available....Sony maybe?

Did you ever change your mind about IBM drives, Ron?

 

[Eric Gisin]

What is the point of repeating it then? I offered a Win32 solution because no
one else has.

 

[Toshi1873]

FAT32 has 4GB file limit, not 2GB.

Thanks... (you can see how long it's been since I used
FAT32!).