Formatting 120 gigs to NTFS

Lucutus

Need a little help on this one, got one of thos 120 gig drives from rymus...an am unable to format the whole thing to NTFS for Win2k.

How do I go about this, here's the symptoms...

It's the only drive in the system, I boot offa the Win2k CD, partition it to a great big partition (it leaves 8 megs unpartitioned for some reason), then I go to format the partition to NTFS, but no joy, it runs all the way through partitioning, (about an hour, maybe more), and then reports it as unformatted or damaged disk. Shock horror.

However, when I set aside a partition of 2 gigs of space, I can format that to FAT, (assume 16 as opposed to 32), and install Win2k, then partition and format the rest to NTFS! Madness.

Other people with these drives have reported that they could format the whole thing to FAT32 in one or two partitions. Although they were simply using them for storage as an addon to thier existing drives.

Any ideas how I can make this drive one big partition formatted using NTFS?

Luc

flamegrill

perhaps you could make one massive 120gb fat32 disk. before u even go near ur win2k cd.

then when u are installing win2k itll ask you what to do with the filesystem. e.g convert to NTFS, format whatever.

You tell it to convert it to ntfs. that should probably work.

JustHalf

Apparently NTFS has a partition size limit of 18 billion gigabytes, so that's not the problem.

How about installing everything in a small(ish) partition and using partition magic or similar to increase the size?

_CreeD_

If Win2k works like NT for installations (And I think it does). Even though you select NTFS when you're formatting the partition it will actually do it in FAT, then covert to NTFS on a second pass. So you have a 4gb Effective partition limit on NT Boot partitions (And 8 even if you follow the next steps),. I think the limit is larger on Win2k as it probably uses FAT32 for the first phase but if thats true then it's limited to 32Gb.
You could try partitioning and formating it to NTFS as a slave in another system and then try installing 2k.

Still....1x120Gb Partition is going to get very messy eventually

Saruman

it may just be a limitation in the installer... NT4 had problems making a boot partition larger than 8gb in NTFS.. maybe something similar so flamegrill's suggestion sounds about the best! if worst comes to worst just merge the partitions with partition magic etc

_CreeD_

Nah, it's Definitely 4Gb for the boot partition created as you install on NT4. The 8Gb limit. even if you partition it in another system, is not enforced, just advised. If you install anything that uses NLS files (And most microsoft products do) that moves over the 8gb point it will render the system unbootable...Nice....

JustHalf

Er, I have a 36 gig Windows 2000 boot partition, so you're clearly mistaken.

And if you're talking about the MBR "partition", then you're also clearly mistaken.

Saruman

nice one justhalf.. though on a more serious note... has Pakistan ever actually been nuked by India? lol

bkehoe

I'm using a 120GB partition (2 60GB drives in RAID0) and had no problem partitioning or installing win2k or xp...

Brendan

JustHalf

Originally posted by Saruman
nice one justhalf.. though on a more serious note... has Pakistan ever actually been nuked by India? lol

No. It's a Simpson's quote from Krusty.

flamegrill

Stephen got one of those drives aswell. he partitioned it using fdisk funnily enough and got it to use the max disk size possible. even though it only reported a 64gb partition, when he formatted the disk it wasclearly 120gig ~ . i say 120gig appox ~ because it will never actually be 120gb in size. thats a whole other discussion that has been had before, no need to bring it up again

so just get win2k to convert to ntfs, and you are sorted.

Regards,

Paul

Lucutus

ok, thanks for the advice, I'll try some of the suggestions here later on tonight, (apart from the partition magic ones, because then I'd have to go download it...and on a modem, that is gonna take forever!), I'll post tomorrow with the results (and maybe more questions!).

Luc

hacktavist

What are the main advantages of ntfs?
Would it make much of a difference on my 80Gb Ata100 drive?

DiscoStu

ntfs uses a small cluster size than fat or fat32 thus cutting down on wasted disk clusters because of small numerous files. it is also a journaled filesystem so there is a very small possibility of loosing any information due to a power failure or an improper shutdown. it also allows acl(access control lists) to let users to restrict access to their files just like the unix/linux filesystem whose name escapes me at the moment. newer versions of ntfs (win2k onwards) also allows the inclusion of metatdata in file headers to facilitate easier serching of files.

JustHalf

It can handle huge drives too?

DiscoStu

i think the maximum partition size for ntfs is 4 terabytes. but dont hold me to that.

Lucutus

ok, the saga continues...

I managed to get a 30 gig FAT32 partition onto the drive last night, but when I installed Windows 2000, it got to the part just after asking for your network setup and then started to copy files, only it couldn't find any of the files it needed on the CD!

booted my other drive with 98 on it, and went to IRC to forget my troubles for a few minutes, where sutty came up with an idea so simple, I totally didn't think to do it beforehand! I left IRC and began the process of installing win2k on my 98 HDD, (master), and setting up the 120 gig as a slave.

Win2k setup on the 98 hdd went perfectly, no hitches. and when it was installed, I partitione3d and formatted the whoe 120 gig drive to NTFS from within Win2k.

Excellent, I hear you say, well read on...

I took out the 98/2k drive and set the 120 gig (actually 114 gig now, for some reason!) NTFS drive to master. I started to install Win2k on it, and got some strange options.

The format screen gave me two option, one to leave the selected partition formatted the way it was, and another to format it to NTFS...there I am, looking at the screen goin' "but it is fúcking NTFS!", needless to say I left it the way it was and proceeded with installing Windows.

All went fine in setup until I got to the copy fikes part after network setup again. The files just won't copy from the disc onto the drive here for some reason, I cancelled the setup, it went through a few more things, (Save Settings, Deleteing Temp Files), and rebooted into Windows 2000! It's missing some things like iexplore.exe, (not like that's a loss), but I wonder if it's good enough to go on?

Will be installing Service Pack 2 later on tonight...

Anyone any incling as to what may have happen here?

Luc

flamegrill

do this:

partition the disk into one big fat32 disk. approx 114gb in size.

install windows2000 on it. then after the install you can convert the disk to NTFS and all should be well. after that, i can only think that there is something wrong with your PC *shock**horror*

then again what i just said may work and probably will.

Regards,

Paul

azezil

Are you installing the networking software during the initial setup? cause that can cause problems, try installing everything then install the networking features later.

Lucutus

flamegrill, I get the same errors on a FAT32 formatted partition as I do with NTFS.

azezil - Not really, I select No - this PC is not part of a domain, don't think Win2k give me the option NOT to instll the basic networking stuff, I'll give it a go later.

Luc

DiscoStu

i can only think that there is something wrong with your PC *shock**horror*

hmm im thinking that to

Lucutus

I'm thinking that's the case too.

Time to try it in another system, bringing it into work tomorrow.

thanks for the help lads, and if anyone has anything else they can offer by way of advice, please do.

Luc

sutty

Those problems of setting up a Domain during install, only happened on NT4.0
as well as the need for a fat32 boot partition.
The win2k install has fixed both of these.


Tony have you taken a look at your BIOS... to make sure it can support large drives? also what kind of mother board are you using, do you have a RIAD controler on it? The High point 370's? It may be the drivers you are using for that if you do.

Lucutus

BIOS detects the drive alright, the boards is an IWILL KA266. No RAID.

Luc