new 80 gig maxtor drive? It won't format Fat32...

[Guest]

or at least it won't as one partition...wtf, why do i buy maxtor. This is the 2nd one i've owned and the first had to go back because maxtor's utility didn't work to change the UDMA settings!! I own 3 IBM drives that work perfectly, and i was scared with all the anti-IBM drive crap on the net so i tried Maxtor one more time. It will allow me to format as NTFS, but i have read negative things about it being slower for audio/video work...which is also the reason i want one large partition.

I'm using Windows 2000, i read somewhere XP won't even allow you to format a partition bigger than 32GB using Fat32. My dad is using 2 IBM 75 GB drives and didn't have any trouble formatting in Fat32 (in win2k) and the drives are seen in XP??? Is the 5GB really the difference here?

 

[digital_trucker]

Dunno, I was always under the impression that NTFS was a better filing system.

Santa must be a trucker.

Dorr, MI

 

[Guest]

i haven't had luck with Maxtors utility either, i just use f-disk and everything works fine, even under XP Pro.

 

[Lars_Coleman]

I wonder how this OS problem is a cause by the Maxtor hard drive? Anyways, try contacting Microsoft about that 32GB limitation of FAT32 in Win2k & WinXP. It is a limitation and the only way you can get around it is by using a third party partition program or using fdisk from a Win98-ME OS. If your dad did it, you might want to ask him how he did it.

Other then that go buy IBM hard drives and see that you have the same problem.

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q184006" target="_new"><font color=green>Q184006</font color=green></A>
<font color=orange>You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create one using the Format tool. This behavior is by design. If you need to create a volume larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system instead.</font color=orange>

<font color=red>I aM WE ToDD DiD.</font color=red><font color=white> I aM </font color=white><font color=blue>SOfA KING WE ToDD DiD</font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

I have 3 Maxtor drives in my machine (yes, count 'em: 3), amongst others. (and even more maxtors scattered in my other machines)
I've never had that problem, but I've never tried fromatting them to FAT32 within win2k or xp. I run win2k, so here is my S.O.P. for operating a drive

1) unless the drive came with a controller card, burn the maxtor CD's and disks.. they're worthless
2) unhook all my other HD's
3) hook up new HD
4) boot to linux and clear partition tables (http://www.toms.net/rb/)
5) boot with win98 start up disk and partition / format the drive
6) check to make sure it partitioned / formatted to full capacity.
7) hook up all drives
8) enjoy

your other option is just to take the drive to any win98 machine and format it there, then just install it in your win2k box. works like a charm.

I created a 61.4Gig Fat32 partition that works as my storage drive on a Win2k box.

no drivers needed

Hope that helps!

 

[Peekay]

My harddrives have always been Maxtor HDs ... I had a 20GB running a FAT32 file system under Win2k partitioned into 3 drives. But I just got the new 80GB Maxtor so I decided to combine all my 20gb partitions into one and use one partition for 80GB hd as well. And so I formatted it (the 80gig) as a FAT32 as well under Win2k using MS-DOS..."format d:" or whatever the drive letter of your Maxtor 80GB is. I also used the software that came with the drive to format it FAT32, I had no problems running it Windows XP or Win2k ... but I just formatted both drives into NTFS .. it really is the BEST! Especially when you are dealing with 80gb HDs, too much storage - you need NTFS man, FAT32 is not reliable for that much data. Plus NTFS is faster ^_^

If you have the Win2K setup CD, boot using it and use the format option in the blue screen setup ... I believe you can format into FAT32 or NTFS.