how for fdisk/format 160 GB disk with FAT32

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lynn McGuire
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Lynn McGuire

Does anyone know how to fdisk and format a large disk
(160 GB) with FAT32 ?

Win98SE Fdisk thinks that my 160 GB drive is 8 GB !
Microsoft's knowledge base says that fdisk only works
up to 137 GB too.

The BIOS on my PC does recognize that the disk is
160 GB though !

I did look at http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/ but I did not see
anything for 48 bit LBA disks.

Thanks,
Lynn McGuire
 
Fdisk cannot tell whether the disk uses 28/32/48 bits, it probably uses 32
bits. You are seeing the fdisk bug that reports sizes modulo 64GB.

Microsoft DOS format/scandisk only supports up to 137GB for FAT32, and I
don't know of any free alternatives that go higher.
 
Lynn said:
Does anyone know how to fdisk and format a large disk
(160 GB) with FAT32 ?

Win98SE Fdisk thinks that my 160 GB drive is 8 GB !
Microsoft's knowledge base says that fdisk only works
up to 137 GB too.
Click to expand...


I believe that if you make it as one partition using 100% of the space,
it'll use the whole drive. (despite the fact that it only reports 8GB)

Or you could use a 3rd party app like Partition Magic, or a linux boot disk.

-WD
 
Does anyone know how to fdisk and format
a large disk (160 GB) with FAT32 ?
Click to expand...

If its just one partition for the entire drive, just
do it with fdisk and tell it to use the entire drive.
Win98SE Fdisk thinks that my 160 GB drive is 8 GB !
Microsoft's knowledge base says that fdisk only works
up to 137 GB too.
Click to expand...

Thats a bit overstated if you are
happy with a single partition per drive.
 
"8GB" makes me think you are trying to use FAT16, not FAT32.
When you go in to FDISK, do you select "Y" (for FAT32) when asked if you
want to Format/Partition for large harddrives .
selecting "N" will only set up partitions for FAT16.

Could there already be a partition(s) on the harddrive, maybe you need to
delete them first.

Who ever manufactured your harddrive, go to their website, see if they have
any tools for Formatting/Partition.
 
Fdisk cannot tell whether the disk uses 28/32/48 bits, it probably uses 32
bits. You are seeing the fdisk bug that reports sizes modulo 64GB.

Microsoft DOS format/scandisk only supports up to 137GB for FAT32, and I
don't know of any free alternatives that go higher.
Click to expand...

I wonder how my 200 GB WD external USB2 hard drive got formatted
to 195 GB using FAT32 ?

The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume WDC Combo created 9/5/2002 2:16 PM
Volume Serial Number is 15DA-1E0F
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
195,310,688 KB total disk space.
1,316,096 KB in 2,214 hidden files.
1,677,792 KB in 51,969 folders.
155,279,040 KB in 1,528,833 files.
37,037,728 KB are available.

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
6,103,459 total allocation units on disk.
1,157,429 allocation units available on disk.

Thanks,
Lynn
 
Troll. That is chkdsk, not DOS scandisk.

Now if you would tell us what you used to format...
 
That is chkdsk, not DOS scandisk.

Yes, that is Windows XP chkdsk. I dual boot Windows XP
and DOS 7 on my PC.
Now if you would tell us what you used to format...
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I did not format the USB external drive. It came from
WD that way.

I tried to format my new drive with Windows XP but it will only
create a NTFS partition on the new 160 GB drive.

Thanks,
Lynn
 
"8GB" makes me think you are trying to use FAT16, not FAT32.
When you go in to FDISK, do you select "Y" (for FAT32) when asked if you
want to Format/Partition for large harddrives .
selecting "N" will only set up partitions for FAT16.
Click to expand...

I am selecting Y.
Could there already be a partition(s) on the harddrive, maybe you need to
delete them first.
Nope.

Who ever manufactured your harddrive, go to their website, see if they have
any tools for Formatting/Partition.
Click to expand...

Samsung. Their format tool does not work on drives over
137 GB yet, see
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/index.htm

Thanks,
Lynn
 
I also was trying to setup an 160 hd in Win98. Search for 'New Fdisk'. When you download it run it from Win 98 se. It will setup your HD so you can have access to all your space.

Since Win98 fdisk wasn't working for me I set up the drive from my XP disk. Still I had a problem until I downloaded the "New Fdisk" program and ran it in Windows. Now I'm very happy!
 
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