Hard drive formtting and partitioning

[Workaholic]

Problem 1

Right I have just bought and recieved one of the external 80GB 2.5" hard drive and realised I need to partition then format it. Using the disk manager from Windows XP Professional it only allows me to use a NTFS format.
OK I think as I may store some 4GB+ file on it, once it's finished I thought I would try the OTG feature on the drive only to find out it wouldn't work. A quick read of the manual shows that it needs a minimum of 1 FAT32 partition however my system wouldn't let me do this. Fine I just use another computer.
Computer B with windows 98 SE - no drivers error and the computer's not networked to the net (no drivers disk in box either.)
Computer C using Mandriva KDE - detects the drive can allow me to open it, but when I try to format the drive errors keeps popping up saying that vfat partition could not be created, nd other times simply asks for the system to reboot. For this I have tried both normal and the root users.

OK, people how do I format this to FAT32?

Problem 2

On my first computer I had throught that the update to 48bit addressing for hard drives in windows XP 2nd service pack would support my 300GB drive. However only today did I know that there was another 20GB unassigned and unused, is there any way through Disk Manager (in Windows XP) that I can add this space to the existing NTFS partition, or do I have to create a new partition as a separate drive?

Thanks for your help

[nichomach]

Problem 1: Delete the existing partition on the drive (disk management, right-click existing partition, choose Delete partition). Create new partition by right-clicking on drive. Make sure it's less than 32GB. Format with FAT32.

[Workaholic]

But then I only have <32GB of usuable space? or can I enlarge this later?

[nichomach]

Create another partition on the disk?

[Workaholic]

^^ I'd rather only have 1 partition, instead of separated ones. Slightly off topic why does windows xp only allow FAT32 sizes of <32GB? when the format can support 160GB hard drives?

[alsenior]

answer to problem 1

the reason win xp does this is purely for performance reasons. after you get over 32gb fat32 really starts to cause a real performance hit. if it is only going to be used on windows nt machines i would recommend using ntfs anyway. i use it on my 20gb external hard drive and it does not cause a problem at all.if it is going to be used on other operating systems where read and write is needed you will have to take nichomach's route and partition the hard drive into 3 partitions.

answer to problem 2

in order to do this you will need to use a 3rd party product. i use partition magic 8 by powerquest (now owned by symantec).