jeffw_00 Posted July 17, 2005 Share Posted July 17, 2005 (edited) So I bought a new seagate 300GB drive for my wife's 2.2GHz P-IV system (it currently has an old 80GB drive and a 40GB drive). It runs Windows XP Home SP2. And is set up as(all FAT32) C: Boot partition, 4GBD: OS Partition 40GBE: storage partition 36GBF: (disk2) Backups 40GBI wanted to make the new disk (FAT32)C: Boot 30GBD: OS partition 110 GBE: (storage and Backups) 160GBSo1) using Image for Windows, I backed up my C and D partitions to the E partition. 1) I tried to use FDISK (WIN98SE) to partition the drive. But it claimed (after "verifying it for 20 minutes) that the entire drive was 24GB. (and yes, the BIOS sees the entire 300GB). So I booted into windows (with the new disk attached as a 3rd drive), and tried to get Partition Magic 8 (norton) to partition it. It got about 1/2 way through setting up the primary partition and crashed. (error #503 or some such).So I tried the SW that came with the drive - partitioned it fine and quickly. For whatever that's worth.Then I tried to restore the backups back to the C and D partitions. And my wonderful IFW program just refuses to do the restore, without explanation. I have posted to their site. IFD just gives me the help screen like I typed in the wrong options (and I'm using the exact option configuration given in the manual). IFW, for some reason, wants to get a lock on my C partition. So, I figured, what the heck, I'll copy all the files from the old partitions to the new one, boot off the new drive, and do a repair install. No hassle.What a bad idea that was! Since XP had 'seen' the new drive attached once, it assigned drive letters F/G/H to it. AFter the repair install (even though this was the only disk on the system), nothing worked because it kept F/G/H assigned to those partitions (no C,D,E, partition on the machine), and of course i was hosed because all the non-windows software (and, actually a lot of the windows software) was looking for the D drive. So I'm dead-in-the-water. There's gotta be an easier way to go about doing this without switching to NTFS. How do YOU go about upgrading a FAT-32 disk to a larger one, making all the partitions bigger? Surely you've got a better way than I do 8-}Thanks for listening. 8-}/thanks/j Edited July 18, 2005 by jeffw_00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted July 18, 2005 Share Posted July 18, 2005 To change drive letter assignments in XP (I don't run it )In Control Panel, open Admin Tools, Computer management, Disk ManagementHightlight the drive and then click ACTION, click on all tasks and you will have the option to change the drive letter.I'm not sure if this will work, if you slave it to the computer because you probably can't have two C drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffw_00 Posted July 18, 2005 Author Share Posted July 18, 2005 thanks zlim, thought of that, but i couldn't get enough functionality out of it to run disk management. Bottom line - I'd love to know why FDISK didn't work properly. But I got past that with the program that came with the drive.I need to find out why i can't restore image backups to a new disk, that's between me and TerabyteUnlimited and given how good their stuff it, there must be a solution.Finally, I am wondering if the image backups, after being restored, get recognized with the wrong drive letter - that one scares me, but if it's what happens, then I guess you could never restore an image (I hope!)thanks/j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrainey Posted July 18, 2005 Share Posted July 18, 2005 Did the software that came with the (really large) drive install any kind of "Disk Manager" software that might be getting in the way of your restore program? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 18, 2005 Share Posted July 18, 2005 fdisk can't partition any drive larger than 64 GB; it doesn't understand 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (although your BIOS does). http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=263044N.B. that the fix available from Microsoft will not work for drives larger than 137 GB.Some background reading is in order: Hard Drive Size Barriers, in DepthSeagate also has this document: Windows 137GB Capacity BarrierThis is what you should have done first:1) converted all FAT32 partitions to NTFS. Why are you still using FAT32, anyway?2) add the new hard drive and let XP create and format the partitions. You can change drive letter assignments in XP using the Drive Management tool in the Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management snap-in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffw_00 Posted July 18, 2005 Author Share Posted July 18, 2005 Did the software that came with the (really large) drive install any kind of "Disk Manager" software that might be getting in the way of your restore program?<{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm actually quite sure it didn'tthanks/j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffw_00 Posted July 18, 2005 Author Share Posted July 18, 2005 Hi Peachy - ok - FDISK didn't work because it doesn't work. I can accept that. (I never thought of using it except last time I had problems some people here recommended it). There are no 137GB issues with this system, FYI. It's pretty new and supports 300GB just fine.I like the NTFS comment - if you don't have the answer, change the question 8-}. I'd really like to stay with FAT-32 for now, or at least until I find a firm "you can't do this with fat32". Changing to NTFS without understanding why I can't use FAT-32 doesn't work for me.Thanks though 8-}/jPS - It's possible PM8 crashed because of BIOS virus protection (doh!) but it's moot, because I believe the software that came with the seagate (Which looks suspiciously like maxblast) did the partitioning right. It looks right under Disk Management and PM8. I actually think I isolated (and worked around) the bug in ImageForDOS and now just have to figure out the command line option to restore the 2nd partition (it detaults to overwriting the first)./j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 18, 2005 Share Posted July 18, 2005 Jeff, to each his own! I've always felt that FAT32 was never a good bet with XP. NTFS is optimised for XP since this is the native filesystem for the OS. For example, even though FAT32 has a theoretical partition size of 8 TB, XP can only format partitions up to 32 GB in size as FAT32. XP can read and write to FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB if they are formatted by other programs.In your case, XP has no problems with the partitions created by the Seagate software. As you indicated, the likely culprit here is IFW/IFD.These 300 GB Seagate's are sweet. I just bought a second one this past week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b2cm Posted July 18, 2005 Share Posted July 18, 2005 Use PM to delete all partitions on the new disk. Use a utility to copy the 80gb disk to the 300gb disk (disk to disk, not partition to partition). Use PM to resize the 3 partitions to your liking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted July 18, 2005 Share Posted July 18, 2005 Symantec Ghost 9 or Symantec Drive Image is great for that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffw_00 Posted July 18, 2005 Author Share Posted July 18, 2005 b2cm - maybe it's a curse or something - but (as I've documented elsewhere) every time I use PM8 something goes horribly wrong 8-}.I managed to workout my IF* issues.thanks for listening! 8-} (and for setting me straight on FDISK)/j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted July 25, 2005 Share Posted July 25, 2005 SHow do YOU go about upgrading a FAT-32 disk to a larger one, making all the partitions bigger? Surely you've got a better way than I do 8-}Thanks for listening. 8-}/thanks/j<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ghost 2003 -- all you need to know. Ghost will restore an image to any partition large enough to hold the data, or it will enlarge the previous known size arbitrarily. Start with a disk that has no partitions defined in the latter case. Can you tell us [me actually] why on earth you need an OS partition that big? How will you back it up in the future? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffw_00 Posted July 25, 2005 Author Share Posted July 25, 2005 Ghost 2003 -- all you need to know. Ghost will restore an image to any partition large enough to hold the data, or it will enlarge the previous known size arbitrarily. Start with a disk that has no partitions defined in the latter case. Can you tell us [me actually] why on earth you need an OS partition that big? How will you back it up in the future?<{POST_SNAPBACK}> thanks - it turns out IFW does it too if you know how to use it. I think it's a better program. Sorry - it's not ONLY the O/S partition, there's other stuff there too. By the time it gets full enough, everything else will have scaled up as well (there was a time you would haave said that about a 12GB partition 8-})/j Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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