Hard Drive Format

jwh532jwh532 Sweet Home, OR
edited January 2005 in Hardware
I have a 20 gig herd drive with ntfs format.
How can I make this drive readable to lower versions of windows?
My daughter need s a hard rive for her PC because both of hers crashed and are now unusable. I tried formating on my PC which has XP to a fat 32,
however I cannot get her machine to read it .

John Hicks

Comments

  • FormFactorFormFactor At the core of forgotten
    edited December 2004
    This from the xp helpfile:

    To format a basic volume
    Open Computer Management (Local).
    Right-click the partition, logical drive, or basic volume you want to format (or reformat), and then click Format.
    Select the options you want, and then click OK.
    Notes

    To open Computer Management, click Start, and then click Control Panel. Double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.
    In the console tree, click Disk Management.
    Where?

    Computer Management (Local)
    Storage
    Disk Management

    You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings might also prevent you from completing this procedure.
    You cannot format the system or boot partition.
    Compression is supported only on NTFS volumes.
    Quick format removes files from the disk but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Use this option only if this disk has been previously formatted and you are sure the disk is not damaged.


    Hope that helps :thumbsup:
  • BoneBone Canadia
    edited January 2005
    ummm but i thought once u got to nfts it can not be formatted to fat32 again? or atleast thats what windows tells u when ur formattign a fat32 to nfts.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited January 2005
    Nah. You can format back to Fat32 just fine (Well, I haven't had a problem yet, if I've ever done it...)
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited January 2005
    You can't convert a pre-existing file system from NTFS BACK to FAT32. You can convert from FAT32 to NTFS. Formatting is different. Formatting clears all data and starts from scratch, so you can format to whatever file system you like.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited January 2005
    what version of windows is she running?

    Tex
  • jwh532jwh532 Sweet Home, OR
    edited January 2005
    ME or lower. Her machine cannot support XP.
    Her machine says formatted not supported even though I have formatted to fat 32 on mine. all file can be transfered to the drive from boot disk when I try to fdisk IT says
    there is no fixed disk. Does this make sense.

    John Hicks
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited January 2005
    Does her bios see the drive?
  • jwh532jwh532 Sweet Home, OR
    edited January 2005
    No
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited January 2005
    How is it jumpered? As master or slave or CS? Its not a format problem if the bios can't detect it? You got other probs.

    Its cable or jumper related.

    Swap the cable and try on its own channel with no other drives as cable select.

    tex
  • jwh532jwh532 Sweet Home, OR
    edited January 2005
    I had it jumpered for master.
    it was the only drive on the cable.

    Problem has been solved. I don not nunderstand why the bios
    would not read it as master. I switched jumper to cable select
    as you suggested and it worked.

    Thanks

    John Hicks
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