160GB Internal HD and Fat 32 ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff
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J

Jeff

Question,

If one is using win xp and one ahs a modern Motherboard and using fat 32,
will internal hard drives greater than 137 gigabytes be supported?

TIA,

Jeff
 
Jeff said:
Question,

If one is using win xp and one ahs a modern Motherboard and using fat 32,
will internal hard drives greater than 137 gigabytes be supported?

TIA,

Jeff
Click to expand...
Microsoft do not reccomend FAT32 partitions over 32Gb as the number of
clusters becomes VERY large.
 
Jeff said:
Question,

If one is using win xp and one ahs a modern Motherboard and using fat 32,
will internal hard drives greater than 137 gigabytes be supported?

TIA,

Jeff
Click to expand...

Follow-up to my own question..If One is doing a fresh install of win xp on a
brand new 160GB HD with a modern 2004 Motherboard, will funning fdisk and
format off a win 98se boot disk work on this internal 160GB hard drive?

TIA

jeff
 
The motherboard bios should have no problem.
The orignal Win XP had a limit of 137GBs, Service Pack 1 fixed that limit.
I know Win XP will run on FAT32.
But why are you formating with FAT32 and not NTFS, on a Win XP computer ?
I do not know the limit of FAT32 partitions.
 
When you set the motherboard bios to boot off CD-ROM, Win XP will have the
tools to partition (FAT32 or NTFS) and format for you.
(I believe the FAT32 partition tool is limited to 32GBs)
If you are going to partition and format with a floppy.
Go the website of whoever manufactured your hard drive, download their DOS
hard drive tools.
They can make a bootable floppy, with their partition and format software.
My Western Digital Floppy installation tools come with a 32GB FAT32
partition limit.
I do not know the FAT32 partition limit of a Win98SE boot floppy.

Asking again, why FAT32 on a Win XP computer ?
 
I suppose I'm afraid legacy software might not run correctly with ntfs.

Here's my anomoly though.

When i built this sytem last year, I formatted the HD fresh with a win 98se
boot disk using fat32 then proceeded to insyall win xp then sp1

In windows xp now this original 80GB drive is one partition and is seen
fully by windows and th bios as a 80 GB hard drive.

What it is I don't understand is if there is a 32GB limitation why do i see
the entire 80 GB hard drive in which already 70 GB is written to?

Also, is it true too that under NTFS, floppy disks can't be written to?

TIA

Jeff
 
Legacy software does not know about FAT32 or NTFS.
Win XP and it's drivers are what interfaces with the hard drive.
Any problem with legacy software will have to do with Win XP itself, not the
hard drive format.

The 32GB limit is just a strong guide line from Microsoft, not an absolute.
So you can use FAT32 partitions larger then 32GBs.

I believe Windows (any version) formats floppies with FAT16
NTFS should not have any problem with floppies.
NTFS was first used with Windows NT,
so any problem (if any) would have been worked out years ago.

So go ahead and format with NTFS.
 
Tod said:
Legacy software does not know about FAT32 or NTFS.
Win XP and it's drivers are what interfaces with the hard drive.
Any problem with legacy software will have to do with Win XP itself, not the
hard drive format.

The 32GB limit is just a strong guide line from Microsoft, not an absolute.
So you can use FAT32 partitions larger then 32GBs.

I believe Windows (any version) formats floppies with FAT16
NTFS should not have any problem with floppies.
NTFS was first used with Windows NT,
so any problem (if any) would have been worked out years ago.

So go ahead and format with NTFS.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the very valuable and thorough advice.

Jeff
 
You need an XP CD with integrated ("slipstreamed") SP1 or SP2, to install it
in 160 GB drive.
 
Now I'm confused, is there a maximum size that can be formatted by
windows xp (NO sp 1) in fat 32 ?

jeff
 
Jeff said:
I suppose I'm afraid legacy software might not run correctly with ntfs.

Here's my anomoly though.

When i built this sytem last year, I formatted the HD fresh with a win 98se
boot disk using fat32 then proceeded to insyall win xp then sp1

In windows xp now this original 80GB drive is one partition and is seen
fully by windows and th bios as a 80 GB hard drive.

What it is I don't understand is if there is a 32GB limitation why do i see
the entire 80 GB hard drive in which already 70 GB is written to?

Also, is it true too that under NTFS, floppy disks can't be written to?

TIA

Jeff
Click to expand...

There are two different limits. The XP CD can only format a HD part. as
FAT32 up to 32GB. But, if you format that XP part as FAT32 using some
FDISK (or equiv.), you can format it up to a much larger limit (128GB?)
and XP will still recognize it and use it.
 
Jeff said:
Now I'm confused, is there a maximum size that can be formatted by
windows xp (NO sp 1) in fat 32 ?
Click to expand...

XP, all versions, can format FAT32 up to 32 GB. That's not a FAT32 limit,
Microsoft deliberately crippled the formatter to discourage the use of
FAT32.
 
: But why are you formating with FAT32 and not NTFS, on a Win XP
computer ?
: I do not know the limit of FAT32 partitions.

If you are running 2 O/S like Windows 98 and XP then Windows 98 wont
be able to boot because it can't read NTFS?
 
Sam said:
: But why are you formating with FAT32 and not NTFS, on a Win XP
computer ?
: I do not know the limit of FAT32 partitions.

If you are running 2 O/S like Windows 98 and XP then Windows 98 wont
be able to boot because it can't read NTFS?
Click to expand...

Why would you want to do that? To run some antiquated game?
 
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