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partition 120 bg hdd
Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:01 pm
by Shadow250
i cant get this drive to partition to its full size in eithier 1 or 2 partitions. fdisk only sees it as a 48 gb hdd
and the western digital data lifeguard tools ony will partition it in 34gb chunks in fat 32 .if i pick ntfs its all available up to the size of the drive. does fat 32 have a max size limit?
Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:30 pm
by DoPeY5007
is it a new drive, used?
Have you done a test on it to see if it is damaged?
Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:35 pm
by Shadow250
its used and tests ok.
Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:55 pm
by eGoCeNTRoNiX
Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 8:46 am
by FlyingPenguin
Windows XP will not create a FAT32 partition larger than 32Gb. It's not a real limit, just MS imposes it. You can get around that by FDISKing it and formatting it from a Win98 boot disk, or using a 3rd party utility like Partition Magic.
That said, however, there's no good reason to format the drive as FAT32 unless you need to be able to read it from an OS that doesn't support NTFS (like a dual boot OS setup). You're much better off with NTFS since FAT32 has a 4Gb max file size limitation.
Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:20 am
by Shadow250
i do have a dual boot os. the fdisk fix worked. it reads the drive as it should but now the format.com only tries to format 48.8 gb. i am looking for a fix to this but as my dialup conn is 24k .its freakin slow. i will be checking back here from time to time to see if anyone has offered any info.
Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 11:21 am
by FlyingPenguin
There's another limit on FAT32 =- it's around 80Gb I believe. Not aware of one at 48Gb unless you're using an older boot disk.
In the end you're going to have to break that drive up into at least 2 partitions if you want to go with FAT32.
Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 3:06 pm
by Executioner
If you use FDISK, you have to make sure you have the latest version. The original one with win98 had a bug that prevented you from formatting drives larger than 64 GB.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;263044
Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:42 pm
by Shadow250
i got it solved, i got the new fdisk which says its formatting 48.8 gb but it formats the whole thing and displays that it did at the end of the process. all software reads it as 120gb so i guess im good to go. thanks a lot for all your suggestions. they were a great help. and i learned something new.
