FAT32 PARTITION LARGER THAN 32GIG EXTENDED FROM WIN2000 PRIMARY FAT32 PARTITION

[WIFFY]

I have an URGENT problem!!! I have a Win2000 machine with a 120 gig hard drive in it
and have created a 30 gig partition formatted FAT32, but now I have created a second partition inside
of Win2000 with the balance of the 120 gig and want to format it FAT32, needless to say WIN2000 won't let me
do this. Please Help!!!! I tried booting with a standard win98 boot disk with the format command on it, to
format this partition with FAT32, but it doesn't even see the created partition (D) that I made inside of win2000.
Again, all I need to do is Format this D: partition that I created in WIN2000 with FAT32. Win2000 wants to do it in
NTFS and I can't do that because this computer is networked to 5 other computers that are all FAT32 and they will
not be able to see that partition if i allow it to use NTFS. PLEASE HELP!! MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE!!! PAULA

 

[WIFFY]

Sorry for yelling!! (all caps) paula didn't realize until too late!

 

[AndyHui]

If the partition is formatted as NTFS, networked computers will still be able to access the data on it. It is not necessary to format as FAT32, since the networked computers will talk to the local OS and it will do all the work.

For a more in-depth explanation, please read the FAQ: Using FAT32 and NTFS on the same system. Your situation is explained down towards the end.

 

[Flatline]

He's right. If you set a share on a drive that is formatted as NTFS, then Windows 9.x machines will see it just like any other share. Besides, it's kind of a pain to get Win2K to see a partition over 32Gb that is formatted as FAT32; if I remember correctly it requires a special driver (I believe it's the FastFAT driver or something close to that).

 

[redbeard1]

because this computer is networked to 5 other computers

Unless those computers are running something specialized, the OS handles how the data looks to other systems, so as long as the other systems have permission to access the drive, they should be able to see it. An example of this would be, a win98 fat32 system accessing data from a win2k server formatted ntfs.

now I have created a second partition inside of Win2000 with the balance of the 120 gig and want to format it FAT32

Win2k doesn't allow you to create a drive larger than 32 gig, and then format it as fat32. It is MS way of getting everyone converted to ntfs. You would have a couple of ways to do this. If the machine isn't win2k server edition, you could install partition magic and then create the partitions in any way you want.

The other would be to delete the new large unused partition in disk management, then startup with a win98 boot disk with fdisk and format on it, create the extended and logical partitions there, and then format from the boot disk. I am making an assumption, that fdisk will still see the unused remainder of the drive. Win98 fdisk knows that ntfs partitions are there, but all it can do with them is delete them as a non-dos partition. Win98 fdisk also has trouble reporting the size of a drive correctly above 64 gig. A patch in the link fixes this issue. Basically the patch is the winME version of fdisk.

64 gig update

 

[AndyHui]

There's no problems with Windows 2000 performing any operations on a FAT32 partition of any size. The FastFAT driver is included by default and transparent to the user. The ONLY limitation in Windows 2000 is that it will not let you format over 32GB. That's it.

 

[Flatline]

I thought you had to load it after the fact; my mistake. I've never dealt with Win2K and large FAT partitions since our network clients at my last few companies have been NT, Win2K, or 'nix-based and didn't use FAT32, I just remembered something about it requiring a driver to be loaded. Always nice to learn something new.

 

[Flatline]

You may want to think about converting your primary partition to NTFS; it's just as fast (faster at some things) and it is journaled, so recovery is much easier from a crash.

The syntax should be something like:
CONVERT C: /fs:ntfs

 

[WIFFY]

Wow!!! You all are great!! Just wanted to thank you for your help and to tell you that we created a
non-formatted logical drive inside of Win2000 and then booted off a boot disk and used the format command and it worked great!!! Although it scared us because it didn't read the size of the partition correctly until after the format was complete. I was afraid to use a standard boot disk, cause somewhere I thought I read that you couldn't use a standard boot disk with Win2000. I was very happy that we could though! Again, thanks for the help!! Wiffy Have a nice Holiday!!