How to go from NTFS to FAT32?

[Acts837]

Danny -- no MSN Messenger.

Jeff -- I have images from bootdisk.com but I have never tried zap. Will use as last resort tonight. Thanks

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: Acts837
Danny -- no MSN Messenger.

Ok, the reason i asked was i have a couple of free utils i found ages ago but cant find on the net now. My webserver is down at the moment so i cant host them.

Erm, I might be able to mail them 🙂

 

[Acts837]

zap 0 gave me an 80H error. My Maxtor MaxBlast software said "fat allocation error." Needless to say I'm still at ground zero with this thing. Will Seagate honor an RMA if their utilities say everything is fine?

Danny - Shoot me that e-mail bud 😀

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

uh.... stupid question.

Did you change the jumpers?

 

[Acts837]

Originally posted by: JustAnAverageGuy
uh.... stupid question.

Did you change the jumpers?

Many times. set as slave, master, & cable select. Desperate here.

 

[Gunbuster]

Tell the CSR its making clicking noises, ask for the advance exchange option, get new drive.

 

[CZroe]

What size is the drive? XP will REFUSE to allow you to format it with anything but NTFS over a certain limit (Mentioned earlier, but I think the limit is more like 40GB nor 32MB😉). The real-mode DOS FDISK may be giving errors because you didn't delete the NON-DOS partition. The commandline FDISK in WindowsXP and on the disc has the same limitation before forcing NTFS.

 

[Adul]

fdisk /mbr

 

[Acts837]

Originally posted by: Adul
fdisk /mbr

did that three times.
-------------------------------------------
Yes the drive is 40GB and above the 32GB limit. Seagate has a jumper that allows you to limit the drives capacity to 32GB. Besides, with partition magic I did end up getting FAT32 on the drive vice NTFS.

The problem remains that I can't set an active partition!

 

[Jeff7]

Now my usual recommendation, if I haven't made it already: AIDA32.
With the drive connected to the computer as a slave drive, install AIDA32 and run it. In its Storage section, click on SMART. Look for the troublesome drive there, and click on it; see what the SMART data comes up as. Look for read/write/seek errors in particular.
If SMART is unavailable, it might be disabled in BIOS; look for it in your BIOS setup and enable it.

 

[Cerb]

It isn't a 'Cuda IV by any chance, is it? If so, do you have Ghost? My dad has run into this with a machine from work...could NOT get it to work right. It would stall in formatting every single time, fdisk was giving oddness, but shows up error free. Set up an OS install on a 40GB WD SE, ghosted it over, and it works fine. So...try making a FAT32 partition on another drive, install the OS, then Ghost it over, increasing the partition size.

 

[Acts837]

Originally posted by: Cerb
It isn't a 'Cuda IV by any chance, is it?

Yes it is a Cuda IV. I have owned several of these at home and work. Never had a problem with them before.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: Acts837

Originally posted by: Cerb
It isn't a 'Cuda IV by any chance, is it?

Yes it is a Cuda IV. I have owned several of these at home and work. Never had a problem with them before.

The incident I mentioned happened quite recently (the machine is still on the workbench...gotta give it a few days of work before it can be pronounced fit for work--it's the boss' PC), and it's a 'Cuda IV 80GB. Working fine now, but needed the Ghost.

 

[thorin]

Maybe I missed something along the way (I only read about 70% of the posts) but is there some reason you definately don't want NTFS?

Thorin

 

[Acts837]

Originally posted by: thorin
Maybe I missed something along the way (I only read about 70% of the posts) but is there some reason you definately don't want NTFS?

Thorin

The fact that the drive is NTFS isn't the big problem. It is the fact that I can't set an active partition.