URGENT weird problem i can't solve

**PimpMasterT** · 19th October 2002

Now the situation is at my college we installed win2k on our removable hds (mine is 80gb) the way it looks

DOS 237 mb
WIN2k 2500 mb
THE rest 76GB

now my hd isn't detected by my bios (Lucky Star 6ABX2V - i went to the site and the bios won't work to flash my old one) neways the hd still is detected by Win XP all partitions recognized but the 76 GB one isn't formated

I want to format it but win XP won't let me format it to fat 32 ust NTFS, even though fat 32 supports up to 2 TB

ne1 had this prob or knows how to fix it? I'm racking this in me brain and can't figure out a solution

**cronus71** · 19th October 2002

Hi, so you want to wipe out what you have on the 80Gb drive?
FDISK it, then format.

Or don't try and format it in Windows XP.

All the best

**Violator** · 19th October 2002

Originally posted by PimpMasterT
Now the situation is at my college we installed win2k on our removable hds (mine is 80gb) the way it looks

DOS 237 mb
WIN2k 2500 mb
THE rest 76GB

now my hd isn't detected by my bios (Lucky Star 6ABX2V - i went to the site and the bios won't work to flash my old one) neways the hd still is detected by Win XP all partitions recognized but the 76 GB one isn't formated

I want to format it but win XP won't let me format it to fat 32 ust NTFS, even though fat 32 supports up to 2 TB

ne1 had this prob or knows how to fix it? I'm racking this in me brain and can't figure out a solution

Are you just wanting Windows to recognise the 76Gb partition?. If so, you're going to have to go NTFS, under 2000/XP you can only format a 32Gb max partition using FAT32.

Or get PM7 and split the 76Gb into smaller partitions and format using FAT32 then.

**PimpMasterT** · 21st October 2002

cheers m8

stupid fat32 sttandards and windows! bah!

**o_thanos** · 21st October 2002

Actually u can format in FAT32 for HDD's over 32GB even under XP.
XP can mount a FAT32 partition but can not format it (?) using the XP's setup/ format tool.

U need to go to the HDD's manufacturer site and get the install/format utillities app for your hard drive and use that under any supported OS as given by the instructions of the utillity.

It's good to know though that your BIOS support large hard drives and update to a newer version if it doesnt.
(But as u said u cant update the BIOS ...is that an administrative restriction btw ?)

Anyway as I see u have a Seagate one and it wouldnt be difficult to find your HDD utillities on their support site .

Good luck