Hard Drive Wierdness in XP

[powderboy]

So, after I figured out that I needed to update the BIOS on my Asus P4S8X mobo, I decided to do a fresh install and get everything dialed in just right.

I have two hard drives: Maxtor 60 and 80 GB drives.

Everything is brand new.

All the drives are unpartitioned, so I decide to set up a 10 GB partition on the 60 GB drive to put all the programs onto. That way I can re-format the partition at a later date without losing my personal files.

Anyway, so I choose FAT32 file system when I installed everything. Now, for some reason, I can't partition the 50 GB partition as FAT32 on the 60 GB drive, only NTFS and the 80 GB drive is only recognizing 32 GB of space.

Any ideas?

 

[Smilin]

There's a little sparkle in my memory but I could be completely wrong...

I think under w2k/xp the format utility is your problem. Although FAT32 and the aformentioned OS's support FAT drives larger than 30gig the built in format utility wont. I think you may have some luck if you try the format from a dos 6.22 or 98 boot disk.

My recommendation is that you use NTFS instead though...for many reasons.

 

[powderboy]

Why NTFS? I've always used FAT32... well... because I've always used it? I don't know the pro's and con's for using NTFS.

Tell me why NTFS is superior?

So, I should be able to format the drives using DOS 6.22 then? I'll give that a whirl.

 

[kursplat]

Tell me why NTFS is superior?

now you've done it... FAQ's ....for you viewing pleasure