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formatting 250GB external drive as FAT32?

A

arossphoto

Junior Member
I have a new 250GB drive in an external USB/FW enclosure. I'd like to create one large partition in FAT32 because I may plug this drive into Mac computers in the future.

I know WinXP can't create FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB, but I have Partition Magic and it will only allow me to create a partition using 82.4% or about 196GB. When I choose NTFS it will allow 100%.

Am I doing something wrong? Why can't I use the whole drive with FAT32?

Thanks very much for any advice.

Andrew
 
Thanks for the reply. It's a brand new drive, so there shouldn't be any partitions on it. When I open PM it shows the entire space as unallocated. If I try to create the 196GB partition that PM allows, it still shows the remaining space as unallocated.

Andrew
 
Are there any other applications similar to Partition Magic that I could try?

Any recommendations would be appreciated.
 
Symantec gdisk (DOS):

gdisk.zip

Run from command line (in pure DOS from boot disk) with the following switches:

gdisk X /cre /pri /for /q

X represents the number of the physical drive you want to work with. e.g. if the drive number is 2, then replace X with 2:

gdisk 2 /cre /pri /for /q

To view all physical disks in the system and confirm the number of the physical drive you want to work with, use the following command line:

gdisk /status

If you leave out the /q option switch (quick format), gdisk will perform a full surface scan and mark any bad sectors.

If you want to specify a volume label, add the following switch:

/v:label

Replace "label" with your desired volume label.

 
Originally posted by: RaiderJ
Isn't there another filesystem that recognizable in both Windows and Macs?
Click to expand...

I think FAT32 is the only one.

I was looking for other partition software and found Acronis Disk Director. I also use Acronis True Image and have been very happy with it, so I decided to try Disk Director. It worked perfectly.

Thanks for all the feedback.

Andrew
 
I use Partition Commander from V-Com, but I'm not sure if it works on USB external disks. It might, if plugged into my NF4 board, as it recognizes USB HDs in BIOS.
 
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