jethrodesign
Junior Member
Hi, I'm trying to get an external LaCie 120GB Firewire drive working with my Windows XP laptop. It's been really problematic, and I can't figure out if it's the drive, the formatting, or my using it on a Mac as well that is causing the issues.
- Does anyone know of a Diagnostics Utility that can thouroughly check external firewire drives for errors? The utilities I've tried all access the drives through DOS, so the firewire drive is not recognized, only internal ATA drives.
- Secondly, I would like to format the drive as Fat32 so that it would be recognized on a Mac as well. I found out that Windows XP cannot format a disk that big in anything other than NTFS. I was told that Windows XP doesn't really support Fat32 partitions over 32GB. Is this true? Should I split the drive up into 4 30GB partitions for it to work properly in both WinXP and OSX?
Thanks. I was able to get the drive formatted as Fat32 once using PartitionMagic. I had to create 2 60GB partitions and then merge them. It worked temporarily in WinXP. And it was recognized on the Mac as well. But I deleted a couple things from the Mac, and the next time I tried to connect it, it wouldn't mount on the Mac or my PC. It would say volume unrecognized, or something like that, and cause all sorts of problems when trying to test/re-partition it. I finally just formatted it as NTFS, and that's where it stands now.
- What's the best way to clear out all the junk that may have accumulated with all these formatting issues and start clean? I don't have Windows 98 on this machine, so I need to know how to do it from Windows XP.
THANKS!
- Does anyone know of a Diagnostics Utility that can thouroughly check external firewire drives for errors? The utilities I've tried all access the drives through DOS, so the firewire drive is not recognized, only internal ATA drives.
- Secondly, I would like to format the drive as Fat32 so that it would be recognized on a Mac as well. I found out that Windows XP cannot format a disk that big in anything other than NTFS. I was told that Windows XP doesn't really support Fat32 partitions over 32GB. Is this true? Should I split the drive up into 4 30GB partitions for it to work properly in both WinXP and OSX?
Thanks. I was able to get the drive formatted as Fat32 once using PartitionMagic. I had to create 2 60GB partitions and then merge them. It worked temporarily in WinXP. And it was recognized on the Mac as well. But I deleted a couple things from the Mac, and the next time I tried to connect it, it wouldn't mount on the Mac or my PC. It would say volume unrecognized, or something like that, and cause all sorts of problems when trying to test/re-partition it. I finally just formatted it as NTFS, and that's where it stands now.
- What's the best way to clear out all the junk that may have accumulated with all these formatting issues and start clean? I don't have Windows 98 on this machine, so I need to know how to do it from Windows XP.
THANKS!
