Can't format above 32GB NTFS on my Maxtor 60GB Drive

[AMD4SPEED]

I've been trying to format my 60GB Drive to NTFS, but Windows 2k will not format it above 32GB. I have to use MaxBlast to format it to 60GB and it can only be FAT32. Any suggestions??
Thanks.

 

[Mapidus]

I would recommend using several partitions on a drive. Especially one that large. Using at least two partitions (one for your OS and programs and the other for data) is a very good idea because if anything goes wrong with the OS, you can just nuke it and reinstall without losing all your data.

As for the 32 gig limit, I am not sure, but it might do something with a limit on the boot partition. Have you tried doing something like making a 4Gig first partition and then trying to format the rest in WinNT or Win2K as a second partition?

 

[frizzlefry]

Yeah I concur with that opinion. Have seperate partitions. I usually go with 3 or 4 partitions on such a large drive. Just makes it easier to find stuff. Make a partition just for the OS. I believe this is recommended by many. I'm not sure what you're planning for this drive but if it's for a server, then you'll really want to format to smaller partitions. 32GB I believe is the limit for NTFS. Fat32 can do it but I don't like fat32 personally. I enjoy to added security benefits of NTFS.

HTH

 

[jmandel]

While the solution of creating several partitions might be easy and technically sound, it still doesn't answer your question; it's just a workaround. I had no problem fdisking and format c:'ing my 40gig IBM drive from a DOS boot disk... but if this doesn't work for you or if you already have a working windows installation to which you've dedicated any amount of effort, I would recommend partitionmagic. This won't do a low-level format of your drive, but rather it will repartition and "format" the partitions that exist. If you already have an NTFS 32 gig partition, you can simply resize it to 60gigs with Paritionmagic... just make sure to use version 6, and to run chkdsk first.

 

[thenewnoise]

i had the same problem on my maxtor 40 gig drive. it would only format to 32 gigs. the problems was because the bios on the motherboard would only read up to 32 gigs. the only way i got it to read all 40 gigs was to use EZ-BIOS from the maxtor site. but win2k will not run with ez-bios. so maybe you should look for a bios update for your motherboard

edit: my typing sucks