Formating a 6 Gb in Fat/Dos using Win XP pro

[PierreG]

Hi there,

I'm new here

I need to format a 6.4 IBM HDD with FAT / DOS system, one partition. It is used as a removable USB device in a XS-Drive.

I have three options to do that : as a removable USB device with Win XP Pro ; or the same with Win ME ; or as the internal drive in my laptop with Win 98 installed on the drive itself.

I know it's possible (the XS-Drive is sold with drive up to 40 Gb, with FAT / DOS system) even though usually all systems refuse to do the format with more than 2 Gb.

Besides these OS's I have Partition Magic, but I didn't find a way...

Thanks if you can help me !

 

[wolluf]

Bit confused by post (not familiar with xs-drive). Is the drive in question a normal IDE hard drive? If so you can just connect it to IDE cable as slave and fornat it in locval operating system (eg, win9x, use fdisk/format, win2k/xp, use disk management).

 

[PierreG]

Yes, it's a normal IDE 2.5" IBM Travelstar and I can connect it through USB (in its external drive case) or I can put it in my laptop.

But either way, the OS tells me it's too big (more than 2047 Mb) to format with FAT / DOS and won't give me any other choice than FAT 32 (which the XS-Drive doesn't support).

XS-Drives are external USB hard drives with a battery and 6in1 card reader (for digital cameras), they are sold empty (you put your HDD in it) or with 20, 30 or 40 Gb HDD (same model as the one I put in) formatted in FAT/DOS (one partition).

Please help !

Thanks !

 

[wolluf]

OK, got it - unfortunately maximum size FAT (fat16) partition is 2GB. Does it really need to be FAT - surely FAT32 (which will allow 6.4GB partition no problem) would be ok? (can't imagine anything used with digital cameras which would have a problem with fat32). If you really need fat(16), best you can do is create 3 separate 2GB parititons.

 

[PierreG]

Yep, it's really mind breaking...

Vosonic says its drive cannot use anything but FAT / DOS, and when I try to format Fat 32, it's unusable (garbled files). When I format Fat 16, it works fine but I'm limited at 2Gb, the drive won't see the other partitions.

And as I said, this drive is also sold with pre-installed 20 to 40 Gb HDDs...

I hope to get an answer from them (the manufacturer) on how to solve this... Will keep you posted but if you have any ideas...

 

[wolluf]

PierreG,

Don't know if you've had a reply from xs-drive yet - but I emailed them & they said you can format using fat32:-

Dear Steve Dunn,

The Hard disk can be formatted FAT32 as well.
The best solution to prepare your own hard disk is to partition it under
Windows 98SE (1 partition), reboot, and format the partition FAT.

Regards,
Xs-Drive.com

 

[bleeper4]

try NTFS!

 

[PierreG]

Thanks, Wolluf ! You did give me some time and I appreciate !

That solution didn't work either (I had tried before) but in the meantime I found the solution thanks to another XS-Drive user. It's tricky :

You have to partition it (one primary partition) with the HDD in a computer, with Dos. Then install the HDD in the XS-Drive, connect it to a 98 / 98se /ME computer and use the "format" feature in Explorer.

It is then formatted Fat 32, but through the XS-Drive hardware, which makes it readable by the internal system ; if the drive is formatted in a computer, the files are all garbled.

Thanks for your time and suggestions !

 

[wolluf]

Glad you got it sorted - its not obvious is it!