Fdisk / Partition in WinXP?

[dmk11]

Yes, I know about the Disk Manager in WinXP - but my problem is, I'm trying to partition a HD inside a USB enclosure. The built-in disk manager allows me to format it as one big partition, but I can't find the option to allow me to partition it into 2 partitions. I even got partition magic and it doesn't seem to recognize usb HDs.
I'm using a laptop, so the idea of swapping the HD and booting WinXp CD to partition this HD is annoying.

Anyone knows how to do this??

 

[JesseKnows]

What does disk manager tell you when you try to delete the one partition you seem to have, and create partitions smaller than the entire drive? The USB connection should be irrelevant.

 

[dmk11]

the "delete partition" option when I right click on that HD from disk manager is greyed out. So I can't delete it.
I wish partition magic work for external drives..

 

[ForUmuse]

I think the reason for this is that the USB intermediate subsystem makes the external hard drive appear like a static memory device, like a smart card, CF, etc. Although I could be wrong as I am frequently pointed out as being so.

 

[dmk11]

I'm starting to believe that now..

But I can't imagine that someone else hasn't solve/encountered this problem before!

 

[kursplat]

does your laptop have a floppy drive ?
i would think you could boot to it , fdisk and format , then let XP just see the drives afterward. then you can format the new partions as NTFS from XP.
or am i just totaly wacked?
good luck

 

[dmk11]

Yes, my laptop has a floppy drive. But since this HD is in a USB enclosure, if I boot from my boot disk, it doesn't recognize it as a drive (doesn't assign a drive letter).
Then again I'm using Win98 startup disk. Is there a boot disk for WinXP?

 

[bacillus]

look here for xp boot disks!

 

[dmk11]

Thanks for the link.. I made a XP bootdisk and it should come in handy in the future..

But still doesn't solve my current problem because booting from the disk still doesn't allow me to access the external usb HD..

 

[Doh!]

I don't think there is anyway to partition the external hdd using a usb connection. The only way would be to take the hdd out of the enclosure, install it in the main pc, partition the hdd & put it back in the enclosure. This method is not so bad since you can partition the hdd using the partition magic's rescue disk & your primary hdd won't be affected at all.

 

[dmk11]

Update & new problem:

Since there's no way to partition in Fdisk, I took the HD out and plug it into a Win98 computer. The computer recognized it fine and I was able to partition the HD into 2 partitions. Unplugged it, put it back in the usb enclosure and made sure that there are 2 partitions when I plugged into the USB. I can even move files in and out of both partition.

Now, I plugged the usb enc on my WinXP machine and only see one partition! When I use disk manager, the 2nd partition is greyed out. When I right click on it and say "format", it complains about how that partition is not "active" and I should reboot the computer and try again. Of course, after rebooting the computer nothing changes.. still the same error.

I don't understand why Win98 would recognize the two partitions, but WinXP only recognize one. Both partitions were formatted as FAT32.

 

[wjsulliv]

I don't understand why you can't boot to XP, put a Win98 boot disk into the floppy drive and then run fdisk?

Regarding your current problem you may need to alter which partitions are active, etc.

 

[dmk11]

I only run WinXP, and I only have laptops..
I *can* boot to WinXP and put in the Win98 bootdisk to run fdisk, but then the HD would be on a usb enclosure and fdisk wouldn't recognize it.