Formatting to FAT32 over 32GB?

tvout · 01-01-2007, 15:09

First of all, cheers loads to everyone who responded to my other posts on here. All info was very helpful...

Here's my latest issue I'm hoping someone might know the best solution to...

Well...Maplins are now selling a Media player drive for 32GB. Neat little thing I thought...takes up to 500GB Hard disk...in FAT or FAT32 format!

I completely forgot that you can't format to FAT32 over 32GB in XP...

I've been researching this...
The drive came with a utility but after using that I could copy files to the media player then neither my XP laptop or desktop would see the drive again after for some reason! Kept getting I/O errors.

I have now directly connected the drive into my desktop machine and formatted it in NTFS and it's fine.

It's 320GB by the way.

I've found two ideas...
Partition Magic (worried about this as I think I used it before and it needs to be installed all the time for the drive to be seen or something? Maybe confusing it with Ontrack Disk Manager though...)
FDISK for Windows 98/ME...found a bootable disk utility (www.bootdisk.com) but can't find any floppy disks anywhere...
I heard also of a limit of 132GB there or something?

I'm now wishing I bought the Sweex media player for Ã‚Â£30 more which has LAN support and NTFS...

Shall I give up on this drive and flog it to my gf?

Any thoughts?

**David F** · 01-01-2007, 15:12

have you tried it formatted to ntfs to see if it works?

tvout · 01-01-2007, 15:30

Yep, the media player couldn't see the drive... :o(

**David F** · 01-01-2007, 15:32

can you not send the media centre back as not fit for purpose ?

Its been ages since I worked with Fat32 I cant remember what the biggest drive I formatted to Fat

homealone · 01-01-2007, 15:34

hi

assuming it is this one

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?...=A50FW&DOY=1m1

it seems to be an ordinary external drive enclosure with a built in card reader & a remote control.

No idea why they recommend FAT32, rather than NTFS, although the volume size restriction is imposed by XP, rather than the drive, which theretically can have partitions up to about 127GB using the FDISK/Format utilities in Win98.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

You can make a bootable CD using the utilities at bootdisk.com if you can't find a floppy.

**David F** · 01-01-2007, 15:36

In that case id sell the hard drive and buy a 120 gig
Ill give ya 30 quid for it lol(the drive not the media player lol )

tvout · 01-01-2007, 15:54

cheers guys...
Yes, that's the one...
To make matters worse, it will support partitions...2 at the most...
So if the largest partition you can have with FAT32 is 127GB and I can only have 2 partitions then it'd leave about 40GB wasted space...
Goodness knows what benefit there'd be with a 500GB drive...
I had to keep unplugging the USB cable and restarting the thing for the PC to even detect and install it properly...
When it worked and I used the supplied FAT32 conversion tool supplied on a CD and copied a video and pictures on to it it was great...
Reconnect the thing via USB to any of my PCs and they can't use it, connected it direct via IDE cable (dismantled the media player) and it said it needed to be formatted in XP...
Both my XP machines had issues with it...it's useless as external storage!

Delta Whiskey · 01-01-2007, 18:18

I bought one of these when it was on special offer last time around, it did state that it is FAT 32 only. It's not just an external case, it can be connected directly to a TV (it has a built in menu system).

I got around the NTFS problem by disconnecting the hard drives in the computer (so I wouldn't format the wrong one, been there, done that) putting the new hard drive into the computer, booted with a Win98 boot floppy then formatted the drive.

DW

mike24 · 07-09-2008, 21:30

The biggest HD that Win98 will see is 137GB which is the maximum set by the ATA interface, which uses a 28bit addressing, and some versions of Windows
Try this site for info http://www.48bitlba.com/
good luck

**Stuart C** · 07-09-2008, 21:49

According to Microsoft ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463 ), Fat32 can theoretically access up to 8 Terrabytes of data, although that's no guarantee that every device will be able to access drives that large. Microsoft say that win98 and me will format drives larger than 32 gig, but you may need to use the startup disk command line.

There are some instructions at http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ind...at32format.htm for formatting large fat32 drives, but I don't have any drives with which to test them..

**David F** · 08-09-2008, 00:38

Mike bumps another well old thread

boroboi · 08-09-2008, 20:30

I have no problems formatting even a 320GB HDD in FAT32 using FDISK only using FORMAT C:

I used to format my old 160GB all the time, that was on a 98se machine.