XP & FAT32

[Mav]

Hi all,

Be gentle with me....

I have 2 HDDs - I had W98SE installed on one, and the other just used for
data - formatted as FAT32.

I have just upgraded to XP and it doesn't recognise the second drive. It
appears in device manager, is working correctly, but XP doesn't like it. I
reformatted the primary master to NTFS during installation, but have left
the other drive as FAT32.

Am I wrong in thinking that XP should recognise a FAT32 partition, or would
this only be if the primary partition is still FAT32?

Any suggestions?

Thanks very much.
Mav

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

XP does just fine with FAT32 drives. Right click My Computer and select Manage, Disk Management. Locate the entry for the drive in question and right click it and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths and assign a drive letter to it, if there isn't one already.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have just upgraded to XP and it doesn't recognise the second drive. It
appears in device manager, is working correctly, but XP doesn't like it. I
reformatted the primary master to NTFS during installation, but have left
the other drive as FAT32.

Am I wrong in thinking that XP should recognise a FAT32 partition, or would
this only be if the primary partition is still FAT32?

You can mix FAT 32 and NTFS partitions freely on a given installation.
If you go to Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management, select
Disk Management and look lower right for the graphic of the drive.

Does it show the partition on the second drive as present? And as
Healthy (FAT 32)? and is there a drive letter assigned there?