NTFS/FAT32

[catgate]

Little problem arising from an eMachine belonging to managements friend.

It has stewed itself (250W PSU). The HDD seems reluctant to be formatted. Motherboard has gone down and the reg. key has gone and rather than buy a new XP she wanted me to do a rebuild, with new bits, and put on her old W98SE (sensible girl). My problem is that having got a new case, MB and CPU and transferred everything else from the old machine I do not seem to be able to get rid of the NTFS and thus I can not format the HDD. Surely this does not mean a new HDD, does it?

[-pops-]

Check the website of the makers of the hard drive - you should be able to get a facility to do a low level format which will remove any trace of a Microsoft system.

After that you will be able to do an f-disk and all the things associated with installing W9x.

[trackrat]

http://www.ameriwebs.net/groupworks/index.html

This link will save you looking for the links pops suggested just click on low level formatting in the left hand column and go to the bottom of the page.

[djohn]

You could install the drive as a slave drive on your machine, take off any data you want then format back to FAT from there.

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Essentially, your options boil down to doing one of two things: reformatting the drive or partition (which results in the data being destroyed) or shelling out for a third-party program. Unfortunately, Windows does not have a built-in tool to convert backwards, like one can to convert from FAT/FAT32 to NTFS. Enter Partition Magic. Partition Magic allows you to convert an NTFS partition back to FAT32, but there is a reason that Partition Magic is not so lovingly referred to as "Partition Tragic". Often conversions simply fail, or worse, destroy data.

This guide is to walk you through the former method of conversion: deleting a partition, and recreating it anew as FAT32. However, no matter which route you choose, backing up your data should be your first priority.

First off, delete the partition that you wish to convert. This is done by going into Disk Management: right click "My Computer" -> Manage -> Disk Management, which is found under the Storage section. Right click the partition you wish to remove, and click "Delete Volume". This will erase the partition. Once you have done this, you must re-create the partition. This is done by right clicking on an unallocated region of a disk, and selecting "Create Partition". Then click "Create Logical Drive". Bear in mind that Windows cannot format a FAT32 partition that is any larger than 32GB. This is the case because FAT32 is terribly inefficient on volumes that are larger than 32GB: fragmentation becomes a serious problem.

To format this new volume, right click it, and choose Format. Again, if the volume you wish to format is larger than 32GB, FAT32 will not be one of the options available to you in the drop-down box. You will have to create multiple partitions if you want to format a large drive as FAT32.

Source >>>> http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=1820

[catgate]

Thank you for that, gentlemen. I'm on the case!.

(I have never yet seen any printed instructions on how to assemble computers with crossed fingers.)

[Alan2273]

If you have any problems rebuilding the computer (especially with your fingers crossed---which will be a slight handicap ), this site offers a good guide.

http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/pc-building/

[catgate]

Well it has been an interesting evening. I had to rush out to a Parish Council meeting (just as an interested bystander) shortly after posting my query, and on my return, in amongst making some cheese, I read the replies and tried to download the recommended software. Unfortunately Western Digital have replaced WDDIAG.EXE (which was supposed to work the trick) with another prog. that is too big to fit on a floppy. So in view of the fact that the HDD contents were not important I have installed Ubuntu in the hope that it will erase NTFS. You never know (well I don't).

[trackrat]

According to my brother, if you are installing Ubuntu from scratch and using the whole hard drive it will be changed from NTFS to either reiserfs or ext3, but he cannot remember which one..

So you should have no problems.

[catgate]

So just keep everything up to date:-

Ubuntu certainly "shifted" NTFS. What it did I'm not certain, but fdisk made no mention of it again. However something odd had happened that would not let me partition as I wanted to.(I suspect it had a bit left in!) It is an 80Gg HDD and I wanted to split it into four 20s. But no way would it act normally, so I went back to Western Digital and downloaded their WDDIAG.EXE substitute (Lifeguard). This, after a certain amount of juggling from one computer to another got rid of NTFS and I went back to FAT32.

I eventually got W98SE up and running but when I came to the fine tuning stuff I found that W98SE PnP apparently had no inbuluilt knowledge of TFT monitors and would only run at 16 colours 800x600. So off I went to Driversguide, and found zilch (that's a new type of monitor). The object in question is a 15" Medion (MD7475AB) but it did not figure anywhere on the Medion support dowload dept. That department did however have a little "friendly" bit that said, in effect, "PCWorld stuff not catered for". I happen to know she bought it from there. I am beginning to feel PCWorld stuffed!!

It is very sick making, particularly when Ubuntu was quite happy to find its own driver for the monitor from within Ubuntu itself and fired up with no problem at all.

Onwards and upwards!

[jason.b.c]

According to my brother, if you are installing Ubuntu from scratch and using the whole hard drive it will be changed from NTFS to either reiserfs or ext3, but he cannot remember which one..

So you should have no problems.

It's EXT3 by default, You have to choose the other types if you want something differant...