New HDD and windows XP help needed please

[Jimmy Little]

just got a new hdd and have chucked it in my computer, windows xp said it had found it and i can see it in device manager, but not in my computer, i know i need to format it but how? can someone help please, as i gotta do this by 4:00 if possible...


thanks in advance Jim

[joshwa]

can you see it in windows? if you can, then you should be able to click on it, and it should ask you if you want to format it.

you should be able to right click on "my computer" go to manage, and then get to disk manager.

[Richie]

You may need to partition it to make it show on desktop. You dont need to split the HDD but you do need to make a primary partition (even if its full HDD size) and the make it active for the OS to pick it up.

[bigal13]

hi

it sounds as if you have just pluged a new drive in and thats how you do not see it in MY COMPUTER you need need to FDISK then FORMAT the drive first best done in DOS with a START UP disk

[Austin]

Go to Control Panel -> Admin Tools -> Computer Man -> Disk Man and you can partn and format from their ... that's the (rather hidden) WinXP way!

[Jimmy Little]

Originally posted by Austin
Go to Control Panel -> Admin Tools -> Computer Man -> Disk Man and you can partn and format from their ... that's the (rather hidden) WinXP way!

it wants me to format in NTFS but i need to fat32 it as i shall be using it in a win98se computer at somepoint soon too

[Trickle]

You cant change the drop down menu to fat32?

[Austin]

It should let you select FAT32. If not you should find the FORMAT or OFORMAT command will natively use FAT32, if it isn't included with WinXP try using any Bootdisk, there's a website online if you need to download bootdisks www.bootdisk.com IIRC. You should still find WinXP Disk Man lets you partn it ready for format otherwise just use FDISK or OFDISK.

[Jimmy Little]

ok thanks guys!

[directhex]

microsoft no longer officially support FAT32 partitions over 32Gb, hence only letting you pick NTFS

[joshwa]

Originally posted by directhex
microsoft no longer officially support FAT32 partitions over 32Gb, hence only letting you pick NTFS

that reminds me of having a hard drive on an Atari ST, without additional 3rd party software, the largest partition size you could have on your hard drive was 32mb - on a 240mb hard drive (which was massive in those days) - you ended up with about 8 partitions

[Jimmy Little]

so pmagic 8 will be my best bet yeah?

[Trickle]

Originally posted by directhex
microsoft no longer officially support FAT32 partitions over 32Gb, hence only letting you pick NTFS

/me heads over to check his 70Gig partition.... ahh you learn something new every day

[directhex]

Originally posted somewhere on microsoft.com
FAT32 in computers running Windows 95 and 98 supports volumes up to 127.53 GB and uses smaller clusters. The reduced cluster size in FAT32 results in a 20 to 30 percent increase in disk space efficiency compared to FAT16 volumes.

Note that the Windows 2000 FAT32 implementation will not create volumes larger than 32-gigabytes. FAT32 volumes larger than 32GB (created by Windows 98 for example) can still be mounted and used however. This limitation on the size of new FAT32 volumes in Windows 2000 exists because the NTFS is available on this platform, and is far more appropriate for volumes of this size.

[Austin]

Just to basically reiterate that in plain(ish) english. FAT32 is a big improvement over FAT16 (which was crappy at 1GB) but FAT32 is VERY wasteful on anything over 16GB (pretty wasteful over 8GB) and often problematic too on partns > 32GB. M$ want you to adopt their own NTFS so from Win2000 on it purposely makes things hard for FAT32 > 32GB. Unfort it is true that FAT32 doesn't cut it anymore but is very useful for those wanting to multi-boot to set up the first partn on the HD as FAT32 as almost every remotely modern (< 7 years old?) OS can use it. Guess that wasn't really much help LOL!

PS. Guess I wanted to point out that FAT32 uses a reduced cluster size compared to FAT16. On any partn/HD over 16GB it's wise to use NTFS.

[Jimmy Little]

well i got hold of my Pmagic8 so i gonna cut the little git into 3! it's only to replace a 'on it's last legs' 20 fujitsu at work...