"Drive cannot be formatted" ?

[Dudley Do Wrong]

I bought a Maxtor 3200 external 160 gb HD recently and it comes with the NTFS style of partition. The computer that I have that is most in need of a backup (like 80 gb worth... the main reason I got the external drive to begin with) uses Windows 98SE. And, as you know, Windows 98SE won't recognize a NTFS device. My office computers use Windows 2000, so I brought my Maxtor external drive with me, hooked it up there and a message came up right away telling me that the external drive wasn't formatted and do I want to format it now? So, of course I said "yes" and chose the FAT32 option and it went ahead and started formatting merrily away, the blue bar slowly making it's way up and after an hour or so it reached the end. After finishing a message came up saying that Drive E (the external drive) cannot be formatted.
Huh? I thought that's what it was doing that whole time.

Did I miss something? Did I forget to do something?

[freakinprince]

are you using the disc that came with maxtor? i know when i installed a bigger drive i used their disc and it worked out great to format....give that a shot

[Dudley Do Wrong]

Thank you, Prince. I'll try the CD when I get home from work tonight.

One thing I left out is I hope I didn't ruin the Maxtor external HD by trying to format in Windows 2000 from the NTFS to the FAT32. While googling formatting information I came across an article that says that one can UPGRADE the various formats (FAT to FAT32, FAT32 to NTFS, etc), but that one CANNOT go backwards, such as what I did, the NTFS to FAT32.
When I click on the External Drive from My Computer and click on properties, it shows it as completely USED with 0 bytes capacity.
Gulp... do you think it'll be alright, or did I somehow mess it all up?

[freakinprince]

hmmmm i don't know...never did that before....

but i would just take my chance and try the CD....and see what happens from there...

if that's the case where you can't formate it to FAT32 for windows....then just go ahead and try formatting it to NTFS...i am sure it will be alright....

i don't see why not it shouldn't format it with FAT32 if you have the proper disk and all

maybe someone who played around with this more can shed some light

[Snurfen]

Dud, the article seems a little confusing, I think they were trying to say it is possible to convert up the chain whilst retaining data (not strictly true) but damn impossible to convert backwards with any data.


You need to delete the partition on the external and recreate a Fat32 partition from scratch (remebering the size limitations for 98 and Fat32). You'll end up making several individual partitions on there, but it'll get you going for what you need to do.

[ascoredhat]

Does one need to delete a partition first BEFORE they format? If they don't, does that mess up the formatting process?

[freakinprince]

you will be ending up deleting the partitions first anyways when you want to join it or whate not....then you will be formating it and then installing OS on it.

and Snurfen is right....if you are talking about converting the format back with data still on it...you will lose that data and it will be erased.

but the format of the partition does not matter as long as you have the proper formating for whichever you want to set up....

[Dudley Do Wrong]

Thanks Snurfen and Freakinprince. I appreciate all your input.

I ended up hooking the USB to my XP laptop and deleting the partition and then putting a new one in and formatted it back to the NTFS it was originally and it seems to be fine now. I'm able to back stuff up to it again. I guess it just refused to be called "FAT32"... must have a complex or something. Luckily there wasn't any problem as far as data was concerned as it was a blank drive to begin with.

So all is well as far as this issue goes and this thread can be closed. Thanks everyone!