Format 250GB Drive As Single FAT32 Volume?

[Piyono]

I just purchased a 250GB Maxtor MaxLineII PATA drive (7Y250P0) and I've installed it on a channel of the auxiliary IDE controller of my Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, where I'm trying to format it as a single 250GB FAT32 volume for use as a backup drive in my external enclosure.

Problems are that a) XP Pro will only allow me to format it as NTFS (which doesn't cut it as this drive may have to be read by OSX) and b) Partition Magic 8 won't create a partition larger than 196MB or so, leaving roughly 43 MB unallocated.

What's the dilly, yo?


]-[

 

[Piyono]

I've gone the two-smaller-partitions route, but I'm not happy about it. I'd still like one monsterous volume.

]-[

 

[LunarMist]

PM 7 will allow up to 256GB per FAT32 partition, which is more than enough. I'm still looking for FAT32 solutions for my 400GB Seagates. I bought PM 8 and was not too happy with its 196GB limitation.

 

[Piyono]

Partition Magic is starting to do strange things in its old age. Well... good to know that I'm not the one doing something wrong, for once.

I Found something called Partition Star but it won't run for reasons unknown. On with the search. Are there any grasrootz partitioning appz out there with flagrant disregard for sizing rulez? Say, something that will format my 250GB drive as 400GB?

Come to think of it, I recall reading somewhere that OSX will not mount FAT32 partitions lasrger than 120MiB, so for the sake of cross-platform interoperability maybe I really oughta stick with the smaller partition set.

Or I could just keep whining until I get my way. You know. Whatever.
It's early. I'm tired.

Piyono

 

[Will Rickards]

Would one of the linux apps do this?
Maybe you can use a linux boot cd to do it?

 

[LunarMist]

If you find something that works, let us know. The only special apps that format drives larger than 32GB seem to use a DDO. They work fine with external enclosures, but when installed internally my computer will not boot, even though the drive is not a boot drive.

 

[Buck]

If the BIOS supports the drive's LBA count, then you should be able to use a Windows 98SE diskette to make one large partition.

 

[sechs]

The issue is file system formating, not partitioning.

Will the DOS format command not work?

 

[Buck]

The issue is file system formating, not partitioning.

Will the DOS format command not work?

Both FDISK and FORMAT should work. However, with the FORMAT command you'll need to enter the size as a percentage, not bytes.

 

[P5-133XL]

Sorry, but it is the Fdisk command that you need to use the % not the format command.

 

[Bozo]

How about Paragon Hard Disk Manager. I use this program when Partition Magic fails. But I have never tried to format a hard drive that large.

http://www.paragon-gmbh.com/

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Buck]

Sorry, but it is the Fdisk command that you need to use the % not the format command.

I expect you're correct P5, I was working from memory and today its been a bit fuzzy.

 

[Will Rickards]

Does this help?
http://www.mager.org/mkdosfs/

 

[Buck]

Piyono, are you going to be creating or using files close to or larger than 4 GB? If so, FAT32 will not work for you.

 

[iGary]

Piyono:

Are you aware that any modern version of OSX can read data from an NTFS-formtatted hard drive? Note that this is READ, not write data to an NTFS-formatted hard drive.

 

[Piyono]

iGary, I'd need OSX to write to this drive as well as read off it.
Buck, no files will even approach 4GB.

I didn't try FDISK or FORMAT yet. Partially because I didn't think of it and partly because my computer is now officially on the fritz. I'm starting a new thread about that as soon as I post this reply.

Preview: "Heeeeeeeeellllpppp!"

Piyono

 

[Piyono]

Whoda thunk...

Maxtor's own MaxBlast software handled the job without a hitch.
However, the drive has to be on a controller that recognizes the higher sectors. My USB2 enclosure acknowledges only about 131 of my drive's 250MB, whereas my motherboard sees it in it's entirety. Formatted in on the motherboard's controller as 250GB and put back into the external enclosure, the drive was recognized by Windows Explorer as 250GB, but writes to the drive sometimes failed. Will try two smaller partitions and see what happens.

Piyono

 

[LunarMist]

Whoda thunk...

Maxtor's own MaxBlast software handled the job without a hitch.

When I used Maxblast or Seagate Tools on the large ATA drive, the system was subsequently unbootable. I kept getting an error although the boot drive is SCSI.

 

[freeborn]

I believe that gdisk.exe bundled with ghost will work. The latest version I have is Ghost 8 and it has succesfully partioned and formated a 200G drive. If I get a chance tomorrow I'll try it on a 400 or 500 G drive.

Free

 

[LunarMist]

So you guys have the 500GB drives almost ready for market? Cool.

 

[timwhit]

I was wondering where you could buy a 500GB drive...

 

[freeborn]

I formatted a 400g drive with gdisk to FAT-32 without issues. I've now placed it in an external enclosure and I have Ghost 8.0 backing up my desktop computer to image files on it over USB.

Free

 

[timwhit]

Was it a Maxtor drive?

 

[freeborn]

Was it a Maxtor drive?

Possible answers:

a) Yes
b) No
c) One of the above

I definately choose answer C

Free

 

[i]

Miniscribe.

 

[CityK]

Was it a Maxtor drive?

Freeborn is our man on the spot at Seagate.

 

[mubs]

Tsk tsk. There you go spilling the beans, CityK.