smaller hard drive

[Stuart Thomson]

I have an external 120gig hard drive which I have formatted but now it says
that it is only 31.4 gig . can somebody help explain this as I am confused.

thanks in advance

 

[Anando [MS-MVP]]

Hi Stuart,

Check the jumper settings. Some hard drives have a jumper setting where the drive is only visible as
a 32 GB one.

--

Anando
Microsoft MVP- Windows Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
http://www.mvps.org


Folder customizations
http://newdelhi.sancharnet.in/minku

Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Anando [MS-MVP]" <[email protected]>

| Hi Stuart,
|
| Check the jumper settings. Some hard drives have a jumper setting where the drive is only
| visible as a 32 GB one.
|
| --
|
| Anando
| Microsoft MVP- Windows Shell/User
| http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
| http://www.mvps.org
|
| Folder customizations
| http://newdelhi.sancharnet.in/minku
|
| Protect your PC!
| http://www.microsoft.com/protect
|
|

Yeah but he said it is an External drive. These are usually encased and use a BIOS
translation routine (USB to IDE or FireWire to IDE) and should not need end user
modification.

 

[Plato]

I have an external 120gig hard drive which I have formatted but now it says
that it is only 31.4 gig . can somebody help explain this as I am confused.

Well, 32 gig is a common bios limitation. Are you sure you had 120 gig
before the "reformat?"

 

[Anna]

I have an external 120gig hard drive which I have formatted but now it
says that it is only 31.4 gig . can somebody help explain this as I am
confused.

thanks in advance

Stuart:
The problem is most likely that (assuming) you formatted it in XP, you
(inadvertently?) formatted it FAT32. XP has a built-in limitation that it
cannot (will not?) format FAT32 partitions > 32 GB. So if there's no data on
that external HD, simply reartition the drive and re:format it in NTFS
using XP's Disk Management utility. Then the full capacity of your drive,
(actually about 111 GB) will be recognized.
Anna

 

[Ook]

Stuart:
The problem is most likely that (assuming) you formatted it in XP, you
(inadvertently?) formatted it FAT32. XP has a built-in limitation that it
cannot (will not?) format FAT32 partitions > 32 GB. So if there's no data
on that external HD, simply reartition the drive and re:format it in
NTFS using XP's Disk Management utility. Then the full capacity of your
drive, (actually about 111 GB) will be recognized.
Anna

I have formatted several drives with XP that were much greater then 32GB,
Fat32. However, I did it with fdisk and format, not the XP gui, maybe it is
just the gui tools that are limited?

 

[Anna]

I have formatted several drives with XP that were much greater then 32GB,
Fat32. However, I did it with fdisk and format, not the XP gui, maybe it
is just the gui tools that are limited?

Yes, the limitation is one imposed by the XP OS. As you state, there's no
problem partitioning/formatting FAT32 partitions of any size using FDISK &
FORMAT. There is a way one can format FAT32 partitions > 32 GB from *within*
the XP environment using a rather simple Linux-developed program. I posted
details of this process to this newsgroup some time ago.
Anna

 

[Ook]

Yes, the limitation is one imposed by the XP OS. As you state, there's no
problem partitioning/formatting FAT32 partitions of any size using FDISK &
FORMAT. There is a way one can format FAT32 partitions > 32 GB from
*within* the XP environment using a rather simple Linux-developed program.
I posted details of this process to this newsgroup some time ago.
Anna

Why is this so? XP works fine with these larger partitions, why would the
gui format tools not allow you to format larger drives? Is it a case of
Microsoft just hasn't got around to updating them?

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Ook" <no usenet spam at zoot al dot com>


|
| Why is this so? XP works fine with these larger partitions, why would the
| gui format tools not allow you to format larger drives? Is it a case of
| Microsoft just hasn't got around to updating them?
|

You have to indicate that you are formatting it with NTFS.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Why is this so? XP works fine with these larger partitions, why would the
gui format tools not allow you to format larger drives? Is it a case of
Microsoft just hasn't got around to updating them?

WinXP won't create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, simply because
NTFS is available and is a *much* better choice for such large
partitions. You can create an NTFS partition large enough to use any
currently available disk as a single partition.

 

[Anna]

Tim Slattery responds...

WinXP won't create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, simply because
NTFS is available and is a *much* better choice for such large
partitions. You can create an NTFS partition large enough to use any
currently available disk as a single partition.

Ook:
There's never been, to my knowledge, any clear-cut explanation from MS as to
why they imposed this 32 GB FAT32 limitation in the XP OS. Why not 50 GB,
why not 100 GB, etc.? It is true, as Tim Slattery states, that we suspect
their rationale was to encourage the use of the NTFS file system because of
its presumed superiority in a number of aspects, chiefly involving security
issues. But why the 32 GB figure was chosen is somewhat of a mystery.
Anna

 

[David H. Lipman]

|
| Ook:
| There's never been, to my knowledge, any clear-cut explanation from MS as to
| why they imposed this 32 GB FAT32 limitation in the XP OS. Why not 50 GB,
| why not 100 GB, etc.? It is true, as Tim Slattery states, that we suspect
| their rationale was to encourage the use of the NTFS file system because of
| its presumed superiority in a number of aspects, chiefly involving security
| issues. But why the 32 GB figure was chosen is somewhat of a mystery.
| Anna
|

It has to do with the cluster size doubling in FAT32.

FAT32
-------
A 1 byte file on a 4KB cluster size consumes 4KB. --> 500MB hard disk
A 1 byte file on a 8Kb cluster size consumes 8KB. --> 8GB hard disk
A 1 byte file on a 16KB cluster size consumes 16KB. --> 16GB hard disk
A 1 byte file on a 32KB cluster size consumes 32KB. --> 32GB hard disk

So you can see the waste in space.

With NTFS however you have a constant 4KB cluster size from 2GB to 2,000 GB hard disk

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