problems with a new hard drive

[RipperRoo]

just taken delivery of a new hard drve from e-buyer, and i cant get the dam thing to format in fat 32 under windows 2k, it starts the format ok, but when it gets to 100% it spits back the error 'the volume is too big'. (b4 u ask, yes i did initialize the drive)

the drive is:

Western Digital Caviar 60Gb 7200rpm UIDE Hard Drive

anyone got an idea whats going on here? if i have to keep the drive as ntfs ill scream

[LPDad]

Are you using the western digital Utilities????

Try making a startup diskette with the WD utilities and use that to start your computer (do not start windows).
When the Utilities are up and running locate and format your harddrive from there.(you will probably have to start from scratch)

[RipperRoo]

nope , not using the WD utils as the drives oem so didnt come with any, but ill give it a try as soon as i find a spare floppy disk

[iAvalance]

FAT32 is not able to handle 60GB
Try NTFS and you will see it works like a rock.

In theory you should be able to do 2TB with FAT32, but windows seems not be able to do so.

[RipperRoo]

Originally posted by iAvalance
FAT32 is not able to handle 60GB
Try NTFS and you will see it works like a rock.

In theory you should be able to do 2TB with FAT32, but windows seems not be able to do so.

my existing drive disagrees with you, the 60 gig western digital i have installed is set up and formated with a Fat 32 file system. and as i said in my original post, the new drive does format ok with ntfs, but i dont want to use ntfs as my drives often come out of the case to be put into other machines for quick data dumps, and if its in ntfs windows 98 and ME installed systems cant access it.


@ LP, i cant find any setup utils on the western digital site and as the drive was OEM it came without any software / cables or documentation.

[RipperRoo]

Note: If you are formatting using the FAT32 file system, partitions cannot be larger than 32 GB. For additional information on this limitation see

problem solved, (or at least answered). and looking back on setting up the 60 i have, it was done using partition magic, so didnt have the volume too big problem windows does. guess ill just have to do it the slow way.

[iAvalance]

it starts the format ok, but when it gets to 100% it spits back the error 'the volume is too big'.

error == error

Guess I didn't get it completely right. I had the same problem. When using smaller partitions or NTFS w2k did the job successfully. Since FAT32 is not optimal on large drives you are adviced to create smaller partitions as well.

[rastagard]

Yea, Ripp, PM has always been what I have used and I never have any volume problems using FAT32. I have 3 - 80 gigs and a 120 gig all FAT32. Seems like Windows tries to push you into switching to NTFS.


I recently tried PM8 and didn't like it. It failed on an operation and I think that it doesn't have enough new features to justify the lack of reliability. I have switched back to PM7.

[yushy]

fortunately, i've had much success with pm 8. i've removed partitions, resized some, created new ones from fat to fat 32 and even linux file systems and linux swap. so far so good...

-- y