Stupid Vista No format option

[TedF]

I repartitioned the whole drive and formatted Ok.
Vista has no FAT32 option anymore.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

I repartitioned the whole drive and formatted Ok.
Vista has no FAT32 option anymore.

MS simply aren't good at partition management, and I switched away
from them at the start of XP and never went back. I do however like
that Vista's in-OS Disk Manager can resize NTFS volumes.

In the case of Vista, bum-biters to avoid include:

1) Convert.exe

As tested from a Vista32-based WinPE, this command-line file system
conversion tool appears to work, but actually does nothing at all. So
if you want to convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS, this won't work.

2) Format.exe

Within XP or Vista's GUI, certain file system format options are not
offered. In XP, you can't format FAT32 over 32G, and in Vista, it's
just ASSumed you want NTFS (no FATxx options are offered).

If you are outside the GUI, you can use the command line Format to do
such things, and it will appear to work. In both XP and Vista, you
can initiate a Format /FS:FAT32 on a volume larger than 32G, and it
will happily (and irreversibly) trash any existing file system
structures and grind away for 32G before falling on its ass,
complaining that the volume is "too big" (as if it couldn't have
tested that before starting the format). Criminally useless.

3) Vista will install or image onto FAT32 in some situations

This isn't supported, doesn't work well (e.g. Suystem Restore breaks)
and you don't want it, even if you do want XP on FAT32.

Due to bug (1), I ended up imaging Vista (via ImageX from WinPE) onto
a FAT32 C: primary partition. ImageX didn't complain the file system
was still FAT32 after Convert had silently failed, and when I booted
Vista from HD after the imaging, Vista didn't complain either, nor did
it convert the file system to NTFS.


On the one hand, I'd not trust such incompitently-coded tools to
manage my partitions. On the other hand, I want any NTFS volumes to
be created by Vista-aware tools, in case Vista changes NTFS in ways
that break compatibility with other pre-Vista tools.

So for now, my SOP is:
- use compitent partitioning tool to create volumes as FATxx
- from Vista-based WinPE, format C: as NTFS
- image or install Vista to C:

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Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!

 

[Ron Miller]

FYI,

If you already have a partition on the current drive, doesn't matter what it
is (Logical or Primary Dos), and you try to create another partition to
install Vista on, you have to make that partition as Logical or else Vista
will take a big dumb on you. I personally using little but powerful tool
called GDisk to do all my partition needs.

There's such a thing as a "logical" drive. Partitions are either
"Primary" or "Extened." Primary partitions can be made Active or not.

Multiple logical drives can be installed on either Primary or Extended
partitions. However, I'm not familiar with the term, "logical partition."

Please explain what you mean by a "logical partition." Whatever you're
getting at may explain why I had trouble installing Vista to a Primary
partition until I pre-formatted the drive on that partition, so I'm
interested in a further explanation. If you're saying that the
additional partition you create for Vista cannot be Primary, I don't
think that's correct.

Thanks

Ron

 

[Peter Hayes]

<snip>

A box is not sentient, so it can't be smart or stupid. That's up to the
person manipulating it, eh?

More likely up to the person who designed it, since this isn't the first
post commenting on the uselessness of the box.

 

[Peter Hayes]

I tried more than 5 times, never missed.

Check that the keyboard is working at boot time. Some wireless or USB
ones don't.

Peter

 

[Donald McDaniel]

There's such a thing as a "logical" drive. Partitions are either "Primary"
or "Extened." Primary partitions can be made Active or not.

Multiple logical drives can be installed on either Primary or Extended
partitions. However, I'm not familiar with the term, "logical partition."

Please explain what you mean by a "logical partition." Whatever you're
getting at may explain why I had trouble installing Vista to a Primary
partition until I pre-formatted the drive on that partition, so I'm
interested in a further explanation. If you're saying that the additional
partition you create for Vista cannot be Primary, I don't think that's
correct.

Thanks

Ron

AFIK, Vista, like XP before it, can use up to 4 primary partitions.
In fact, it is BETTER that your Vista partition is "Primary", and not a
"logical drive in an Extended partition".

 

[Rock]

AFIK, Vista, like XP before it, can use up to 4 primary partitions.
In fact, it is BETTER that your Vista partition is "Primary", and not a
"logical drive in an Extended partition".

Why is it better that Vista be on a primary partition?

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

There's such a thing as a "logical" drive. Partitions are either
"Primary" or "Extened." Primary partitions can be made Active or not.
Multiple logical drives can be installed on either Primary or Extended
partitions. However, I'm not familiar with the term, "logical partition."

The terms "patrition", "drive" and "volume" are used loosely to mean
the same things, but I prefer to use them more specifically:
- a drive is a physical unit
- a partition is a system-level logical division of a drive
- a volume is anything that has or can have a drive letter
- a logical volume is an OS-level division of a drive

MS uses "drive" to mean either a physical drive or a logical entity
that has a letter mapped to it - so you have drives containing
partitions containing drives again. That looks messy to me.

MS also uses "partition" to include both system-level partitions and
OS-level volumes within these, which blurs the distinction and causes
much of the confusion we see, especially when working with non-MS OSs.

A partition is system level, as defined in MBR partition table or
3rd-party system-level alternative e.g. BING. Partitions may be
invisible to MS OSs and not have letters allocated to them, but they
are still partitions, handled in an OS-agnostic manner by MBR.

A volume is OS-level, containing a file system (or virtualized file
system, as is the case with network drive mappings) and will usually
have a drive letter assigned to it. Logical volumes are OS-level
constructs that are tucked away within what the system will see as an
extended partition. Some non-MS OSs may play there, but they are
encroaching into MS OS territory when they do.

Please explain what you mean by a "logical partition." Whatever you're
getting at may explain why I had trouble installing Vista to a Primary
partition until I pre-formatted the drive on that partition, so I'm
interested in a further explanation. If you're saying that the
additional partition you create for Vista cannot be Primary, I don't
think that's correct.

MS refers to the partition types it "owns" as primary, which can be
bootable, and extended, which are not directly bootable and are merely
containers for logical volumes.

You can install an OS within a logical volume, but it depends on a
footprint on a bootable primary in order to boot.

All of MS's current boot managers are OS-level, i.e. they reside
within a bootable MS primary. They are:
- Vista's new binary boot manager
- NT/2000/XP/2003 NTLDR and Boot.ini boot manager
- Win9x IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS / WINBOOT.INI boot manager

Each can be tucked within the other (tho I'm not sure in NTLDR can be
nested within Vista's boot manager). For example, NTLDR can process
Boot.ini, and if you select a Win9x, then the Win9x F8 boot manager
can offer access to Previous Version of MSDOS from IO.SYS

3rd-party boot managers are usually system-level, and can wrap all of
the above; they are how you can swap between MS and other OSs in ways
that can hide OSs from each other. They generally work by
manipulating partition type bytes and Active flags before booting
whatever partition is set as Active.

The trouble is, spoofing partition type bytes is not as effective as
it should be, when it comes to hinding NT-family MS OSs from each
other. To do that safely, one can combine the system-level boot
manager with non-standard partition table and management, which is
what BING does when the BING partition system is enabled.

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Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!