cannot format NTFS to Fat32

  • Thread starter Thread starter sillyputty
  • Start date Start date
S

sillyputty

I'm building a win98 box and want to use an old 2GB HD that was on a
winXP system. The drive was formated NTFS and I can't get it to
reformat to Fat32. During Win98 setup it says the drive needs
formating, but neither the fdisk or format commands will work. Fdisk
says: "No fixed disks present" and format says: "format not supported
on drive C:"
 
sillyputty said:
I'm building a win98 box and want to use an old 2GB HD that was on a
winXP system. The drive was formated NTFS and I can't get it to
reformat to Fat32. During Win98 setup it says the drive needs
formating, but neither the fdisk or format commands will work. Fdisk
says: "No fixed disks present" and format says: "format not supported
on drive C:"
Click to expand...

Ok, the second message first. You're not going to be able to format a
disk that you've booted from. I'm not sure what you're doing, but
that's the message you'll get if you attempt that. Boot from a floppy
disk that has fdisk and format (bootdisk.com probably has what you need.)

As for the first message, I would recommend disconnecting all hard
drives, except the one in question, and booting from your floppy disk.
Run fdisk. Can you see the hard drive? If you can't check your cabling
and jumpers. Still can't see it? If it's still a non-starter, get
diagnostic tools from the hard drive's manufacturer--generally on a
bootable floppy.

If you can see it in fdisk, drop all the partitions. Create a new
partition that spans the entire drive. (2 GB is ok for win98, but I
wouldn't mess with anything less.) At that point, you should be able to
drop out of fdisk and format the drive.

Oh, when fdisk starts up, say "Y" to Enable Large Drive Support?
 
sillyputty said:
I'm building a win98 box and want to use an old 2GB HD that was on a
winXP system. The drive was formated NTFS and I can't get it to
reformat to Fat32. During Win98 setup it says the drive needs
formating, but neither the fdisk or format commands will work. Fdisk
says: "No fixed disks present" and format says: "format not supported
on drive C:"
Click to expand...

remove the partitions first using:
http://www.bootdisk.com/plan10/delpart.zip
 
I'm building a win98 box and want to use an old 2GB HD that was on a
winXP system. The drive was formated NTFS and I can't get it to
reformat to Fat32. During Win98 setup it says the drive needs
formating, but neither the fdisk or format commands will work. Fdisk
says: "No fixed disks present" and format says: "format not supported
on drive C:"
Click to expand...

Regarding the fdisk error. Fdisk can have issues viewing and deleting
NTFS partitions. Though i've had successes when its been just one
partition. Where I think it doesn't work, I got a different error.
Anyhow, you've probably run into one of these issues.
Regarding the format error. I think Format gives that error, because
normally, if you create a partition in e.g. fdisk, then when it comes
to formatting it, you can still go to C: , try to type DIR, and it
gives an error like "invalid boot media". THat's how it should be. You
can do format c: or I suppose, format c: /q, and it'll work. Whereas I
think when the partition is NTFS, DOS can't see it at all. And I guess
the format command has problems.


There are other ways to delete partitions.
An easy way,
Is to boot up from a win xp cd and use that to delete partitions. I
know you're not installing win xp, but you can still use the win xp
setup to do that. Then just quit the setup once the partition is
deleted
otherwise, it's finding some other software to do it. maybe some
little freeware prog somebody mentioned. Or a linux boot disk Or
plugging the hard drive into another machine, not booting from that
hard drive, and deleting the partition from e.g. win xp disk
management. You could do that quicker with a usb-ide adaptor, then
you don't have to open the machine.

win xp cd seems ideal if you have one lying around. I don't think i've
used it for that myself, but one could, and I prob would if fdisk
wasn't doing it. Or even anyway.. If I was more into linux i'd just
use a linux boot disk.
 
Back
Top