reformat 200 GB WD USB2 hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lynn McGuire
  • Start date Start date
L

Lynn McGuire

How do you reformat a Western Digitial 200 GB WD with
Fat32 ? The built in format utility in Windows XP Pro says
that the drive is too big.

Thanks,
Lynn McGuire
 
} How do you reformat a Western Digitial 200 GB WD with
} Fat32 ? The built in format utility in Windows XP Pro says
} that the drive is too big.

Win XP likes to format large drives only as NTFS. Easiest workaround is
to find a Win98 system to format the drive as FAT32, if you can find one
that will recognize its full capacity. Someone here may also have some
other tricks up their sleeves....

cheers,

-*-
Charles M. Kozierok (mailto:[email protected] -- remove "X"s to mail)
Webslave, The PC Guide - <http://www.PCGuide.com>
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's Guides...
 
Why format with FAT32 ?, on a Win XP computer.

I was able to FAT32 format a WD 160GB, hooked up to a Promise 100/TX2
controller
using Western Digital "Data Lifeguard v11.0 for DOS"

http://support.wdc.com/download/

How do it with USB, good question.

A local computer shop may be able to hook the drive to a newer motherboard,
on the IDE controller
boot from a Win 98SE or Win Me boot floppy and setup FAT32 Partitions.
 
The formatter included with XP doesn't make FAT32 partitions larger than 32
GB. You could make 6 or 7 partitions, but I doubt that you want to do that.

I own a copy of Partition Magic 8, purchased from Powerquest before Symantec
bought the company. I find PM easy to use, but it's not inexpensive at
retail. (OEM versions can sometimes be had cheaply.)

If you're looking for a free solution, the Data Lifeguard Tools from
www.wdc.com may be able to format an external hard drive. (Get the windows
version, as it's likelier than the DOS version to support USB.) I haven't
used it myself, but it may be worth the download (approx. 3.6 MB).

Good luck.

Address altered. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
When I tried the Western Digital Data Lifeguard windows version.
It would not Fat32 partition past the 32GB limit.
 
Charles M. Kozierok said:
} How do you reformat a Western Digitial 200 GB WD with
} Fat32 ? The built in format utility in Windows XP Pro says
} that the drive is too big.

Win XP likes to format large drives only as NTFS. Easiest workaround is
to find a Win98 system to format the drive as FAT32, if you can find one
that will recognize its full capacity. Someone here may also have some
other tricks up their sleeves....

cheers,

-*-
Charles M. Kozierok (mailto:[email protected] -- remove "X"s to mail)
Webslave, The PC Guide - <http://www.PCGuide.com>
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's
Click to expand...
Guides...
Micro$oft do not reccomend FAT32 drives greater than 32Gb because the number
of clusters becomes VERY large giving a greater overhead in file access.
Large Ntfs partitions are more secure.
Mike.
 
Micro$oft do not reccomend FAT32 drives greater than 32Gb because the number
of clusters becomes VERY large giving a greater overhead in file access.
Large Ntfs partitions are more secure.
Click to expand...

The drive is 6 million clusters at 32K each. That is not bad for a backup
drive that allows one to have compatibility between Windows 9X, 2K,
XP and Linux.

W:\bench\CHM>chkdsk e:
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.
7,776 KB in 88 hidden files.
459,232 KB in 13,777 folders.
56,458,336 KB in 1,007,217 files.
138,385,312 KB are available.

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
6,103,459 total allocation units on disk.
4,324,541 allocation units available on disk.

Lynn
 
Back
Top