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Formatting large HD with FAT32

rkoenn

rkoenn

Senior member
I have been doing computers for years but am stumped by a current problem. I have a "Frankenstein" machine with an eMachines MB. It uses the Intel 810 chipset and a buddy is using it strictly to play music in his workshop. I have a 120GB Seagate HD to put in it and want to install Win98SE. However when I try to set it up with Fdisk it only allows me to use 50GB of the 120 capacity. I did some searching and FAT32 should allow me the full capacity. I put it in my XP machine and it shows 120GB available. What should I try next. The MB shows the LBA capacity correctly at 120GB. I am stumped by this one. Help is appreciated.
 
I believe this is a problem with the old fdisk that ships with Win95/98. If you format it in a Win2K/XP system, 95/98 should be able to use it (that is, create a 120GB partition and then don't reformat/partition it when you install 98).

Or you may be able to get a newer DOS version of fdisk (on a boot floppy, etc.) that will correctly see the whole thing.
 
Fdisk will format 64GB only
the later fdisk goes to 128GB
a curious thing happens if you do a fdisk of 120GB, it will show 56GB, or 120-64
just boot to and use the seagate (downloadable zip from their site) diskwizrd from 2 floppy
the difference will be between 2 hours for one and 2 minutes for the other
 
Partition Commander 9 or later does it all too and you can get legit copies for cheap on eBay. I have win2k and I wasn't able to create FAT32 partitions (or logical drives within an Extended partition) of larger than 32G each with Storage Manager in Win2k. I ended up doing them NTFS. This was on a 160GB PATA mounted externally via USB.

.bh.
 
for free, a linux livecd generally has some partition manager, like xfdisk etc...

Win2k/XP is limited to creating 32GB partitions on FAT32 which is freaking retarded.

Mac OSX's Disk Utility can also format FAT32.
 
Hold it! My understanding is that FAT32 cannot do more than 32 GB because that's all you can keep tack of with a 32-bit addressing system for individual sectors. So IF you stick to FAT32 you are always limited to 32GB volumes. On a 120-GB drive you would simply have to make many partitions.

To go beyond 32 GB you MUST abandon FAT32 systems and go with NTFS.
 
You can format a drive larger than 32 GB but, you can not have an individual partition larger than 32 GB. So, you just have to break the drive into 32 GB or smaller partitions.
 
Originally posted by: Paperdoc
Hold it! My understanding is that FAT32 cannot do more than 32 GB because that's all you can keep tack of with a 32-bit addressing system for individual sectors. So IF you stick to FAT32 you are always limited to 32GB volumes. On a 120-GB drive you would simply have to make many partitions.

To go beyond 32 GB you MUST abandon FAT32 systems and go with NTFS.
Click to expand...

As per Seagate:
"FAT32 supports drives up to 2 terabytes in size. "

As per Microsoft:
FAT32 supports drives up to 2 terabytes in size.


The 32GB limit is artificial, imposed by Microsoft to, I assume, encourage people to switch to NTFS.
 
*** The last two posts before Jeff7's are incorrect ***

FAT32 in windows caps out at 128Gb. I have experienced this myself, and the only other limitation is that filesize of induvidual files cannot exceed ~4Gb (so I had problems with making images of certain DVDs).

Jeff7 is correct, though, as windows itself will not format a partition of larger than 32Gb as FAT32, even though FAT32 supports it. Use a program that specialises in that kind of thing, like Partition Tragic to make a partition of larger than 32Gb and windows will read or right to it fine, it's just that the internal formatting has been crippled to encourage people to use NTFS for large volumes. First time I got my drives I used a linux disc to create and format my partitions (hence how I started with an 80Gb FAT32 when I installed windows), then installed windows once I had the drives set up the way I wanted. For the record I only wanted large partitions in FAT32 as opposed to NTFS because most linux distros have no problem with FAT32.
 
Originally posted by: Roguestar
*** The last two posts before Jeff7's are incorrect ***

FAT32 caps out at 128Gb. I have experienced this myself, and the only other limitation is that filesize of induvidual files cannot exceed ~4Gb (so I had problems with making images of certain DVDs).

Jeff7 is correct, though, as windows itself will not format a partition of larger than 32Gb as FAT32, even though FAT32 supports it. Use a program that specialises in that kind of thing, like Partition Tragic to make a partition of larger than 32Gb and windows will read or right to it fine, it's just that the internal formatting has been crippled to encourage people to use NTFS for large volumes. First time I got my drives I used a linux disc to create and format my partitions (hence how I started with an 80Gb FAT32 when I installed windows), then installed windows once I had the drives set up the way I wanted. For the record I only wanted large partitions in FAT32 as opposed to NTFS because most linux distros have no problem with FAT32.
Click to expand...

Well sorry to break your bubble but you're wrong and Jeff is right.
While it'd be very hard to have a reliable 2TB FAT32 drive or even a quarter of that size, I'm sure it's doable. I know for a FACT that you can use FAT32 drives in excess of 128GB. (I've got some systems that have 250GB HDDs with FAT32 on them addressing the whole drive and they're not defective)

The 128GB limit was created due to the Logical Block Addressing limit of 28bits which is effectively 128GB. They've since changed it to 48bits which would allow you to access drives in excess of 128GB. This limitation is not of the drive itself but if of the drive controller.

From my understanding, all intel 800 series chipsets and above include a southbridge that is capable of 48bit LBA. Now the question is, does the bios have limitations of its own that would prevent addressing the 48bit address space and do you have the proper drivers for that drive controller or not.

The Intel 440 based chipsets and lower are paired with a southbridge (has integrated drive controller) that is only 28bit LBA and is limited to 128GB, that said, there are drive limitations that limit the drive space further due to other legacy issues. A common issue with 440 based systems is a limit of 32GB due to bios issues and such.

Drive space limitations I'm aware of.

512MB, 1GB,2GB,8GB,32GB,64GB,128GB,2TB, and so on..
These are just a list of the ones I'm familiar with, not all of them have to be hardware related and are just the ones that have come up over the years.
 
Only problem in this thread is an old, outdated copy of fdisk. Get ahold of a newer copy, and the problem will disappear.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263044/en-us

As said in the article, the older version used to do some calculations on disk size 16-bit wise, which limited it to about 64GB (roughly). The newer version does the full 32-bit calculations, which fixes that. When you start it up there will be an extra text screen at the beginning talking about larger disk sizes, that's how you know it's the new version. You can download the "fix" (new version) below that article.
 
Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
Originally posted by: Roguestar
*** The last two posts before Jeff7's are incorrect ***

FAT32 caps out at 128Gb. I have experienced this myself, and the only other limitation is that filesize of induvidual files cannot exceed ~4Gb (so I had problems with making images of certain DVDs).

Jeff7 is correct, though, as windows itself will not format a partition of larger than 32Gb as FAT32, even though FAT32 supports it. Use a program that specialises in that kind of thing, like Partition Tragic to make a partition of larger than 32Gb and windows will read or right to it fine, it's just that the internal formatting has been crippled to encourage people to use NTFS for large volumes. First time I got my drives I used a linux disc to create and format my partitions (hence how I started with an 80Gb FAT32 when I installed windows), then installed windows once I had the drives set up the way I wanted. For the record I only wanted large partitions in FAT32 as opposed to NTFS because most linux distros have no problem with FAT32.
Click to expand...

Well sorry to break your bubble but you're wrong and Jeff is right.
Click to expand...
If you had read my whole post you'd have gotten the gist of what I meant and noticed I left out "in windows" (which has now been added to my original post) and that I was in fact agreeing with Jeff7 and not claiming he was wrong. :roll:

In fact I was making the entire point that FAT32 does not cap out at 32Gb in windows, clearly shown by the wikipedia link I provided and the contribution of other people in this thread including yourself.
 
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