Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB Drive works only with NTFS?

[gibbsman]

I was just wondering if anyone else was having problems getting their Seagate Barracuda IV 80GB Drive to work with the FAT32 File system. I know that FAT32 is suppose to have a limitation at 2 terabytes, but this isn't even close. My BIOS recognized the drive at 76GB which was correct. It is in LBA mode, I tried it on my Promise ATA100 controller and the normal IDE 33/66 Controller. Same thing. It's recognized in the BIOS as 80GB and in LBA mode. Then I used FDISK and it even recognized it as 80gb. But when I go to format it only will format as a 14GB drive. I used WINXP RC2 and Windows 2000 and they both only give me the option to use NTFS, so I assume that is the only thing that will handle the 80GB drive.

I'm just curious of other peoples experiences with this drive.

BTW: THIS DRIVE ROCKS! In Win2000 and WinXP it runs great! Very Quiet, and VERY FAST!

 

[DeeK]

I'm not sure why it's only doing 14GB - Win2k's limit for making FAT32 partitions is 32GB. I've heard that MS wants people to transition to NTFS, so they put the 32GB limit into Win2k (that's only for making partitions - it can still read larger FAT32 partitions fine). If you want it all in FAT32, you'll need to partition it with Win98/ME fdisk. You'll need the patched version that supports drives larger than 64GB.

 

[gibbsman]

Actually, I am using a WINME boot disk and FDISK reports the drive correctly as being 80GB. It only reports 14GB when I try to format the drive. When I try to install WIN2K or WINXP it won't even give me an option for FAT32. It only gives me a NTFS option. In NTFS it works great.