Is is possible to partition an external usb2.0/firewire combo HD?

[altair401]

I have an ACOM DATA external hard drive that has 120GB. I'd like to break it up into 4 partitions. When I try to do this with Patition Magic, it fails because PM can't see the hard drive in DOS.

The point of all this is I'd like to install some other Operating Systems onto that HD and also be able to convert at least one of those partitions to NTFS. (Came factory shipped w/ FAT32) I already have 18GB of data on it so I'd like to not have to move all that to CD in order to format using XP's disk manager...That's a lot of CD-Rs to waste if theres an easier way.

Anyone know of any reliable software that might help me?

Thanks

 

[ski]

If you have an internal HD with at least 20 GB of free space you should be able to transfer the data to it, and then repartition and reformat the external HD in Win XP.

One note: the largest FAT32 partition that can be made with Win XP is 32 GB. If you want it to be larger, then you have to use 3rd party software.

 

[dbData]

Do a search for "usb dos" including the quotation marks. That'll get you in the right direction. Using DUSE (USB driver for DOS) you can boot the system to a DOS prompt and run PM on it.

Unless your computer supports booting from USB, the exercise is pointless. Installing an OS on the USB drive assumes you can boot from the drive.


Good Luck!

dbData

http://www.howtorecoverdata.com