Another one for the techies....

[Tigger]

I shouldn't need to use a floppy though should I cos its a second hard drive acting a slave - so surely I can just do it through CMD?

[fugjostle]

Just checked at another site and apparently you can do it from within 2000:

(1) Click 'MyComputer'
(2) Manage
(3) Storage
(4) Disk Management
(5) Delete NTFS Partition
(6) Create FAT32 Partition

Still not 100% convinced but give it a go.

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Fug

[fugjostle]

And if 'FAT32' doesn't appear in your system choices then you can reboot from the 2000 CD right up to the point where it asks you to specify the location. Choose the 2nd hard drive and format as FAT32. It will check the drive... when its done checking and about to install files, abort the setup by rebooting. Then you should be done.

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Fug

[Tigger]

It's looking good, formatting at the moment. Fingers crossed!

[Tigger]

Am I right in thinking that you partition it after its been formatted FAT32?

[fugjostle]

I have a sneaking suspicion that 2000 will not let you format a drive greater than 32Gb as FAT32. Give it a try but you might have to go back to using FDISK.

FDISK is just a graphical dos based partition magic tool. It will show you the drives in your machines and highlight the partitions.

From this point it will give you some options to delete and format the partitions. Fire it up and its pretty self explanatory... just ensure you don't dick about with your 1st HD

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Fug

[fugjostle]

Originally posted by Tigger
Am I right in thinking that you partition it after its been formatted FAT32?

Should be ready to be used m8 (fingers crossed). You can partition it or leave it :-)

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Fug

[Tigger]

Jesus - this is why I just draw stuff!!! I'm gonna let win2k (still in my opininion the finest of all the ms operating systems - I still don't know what the crash screen looks like!!!) do it's stuff and see if i can sort it from there. If not I'll have a go at the fdsik program! I just hope to god it differentiates clearly between the two drives!!!!!

[fugjostle]

It should do

Good Luck... why you using FAT32 btw? NTFS is a much better file system. I'm guessing its something to do with your wizzy graphics packages and the space they need to process the textures on your porn?

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Fug

[Tigger]

Oh? I just assumed FAT32 was better as it is what I've always used? TBH I have no idea what the difference is!

Anyway - I've cracked it wrt partitioning the drive, from an unassigned volume I can format a specific amount of the drive with whatever system I like (FAT, FAT32 or NTFS) and then assign the remainder of the drive.

It's not too late for me to switch to NTFS, but what's the difference?

[fugjostle]

NTFS is the new super filesystem. NTFS allows lots of Win2K features that cannot be used on FAT or FAT32. For example, you can create security and access control with NTFS and you can't with FAT. There's a few other bits that are of no interest to you.

But the main issue is with file size. With FAT32 you cannot create a file bigger than 4Gb, but with NTFS its unlimited. Also you have an upper limit of 2 terrabytes for your volume size with FAT32 but with NTFS its possible to go beyond.

Microsoft recommends you to use NTFS for a disk of your size cause NTFS is more secure, reliable and makes efficient use of the disk space supposedly removing the need for defrag cause it manages itself. I've not much experience with 2000, I use NT tho and you still need to defrag once in a while.

FAT32 is really the advanced FAT (File Allocation Table) for use with win95 & 98. Everything else now uses NTFS.

Found this on the web that lists the pro's of NTFS:

NTFS (New Technologies File System) has all of the basic capabilities of FAT, and it provides the following advantages over the FAT and FAT 32 file systems:

File security. Access rights can be assigned to files and directories, allowing users full access, partial access or no access at all to data on your hard disk.

Disk compression. File and directory compression can be performed directly without the need for third party utilities, saving space, while allowing for transparent access and operation to the user.

Support for large hard disks, with a theoretical limit of 16 ExaBytes, and up to 2 TeraBytes (TB).

NTFS supports Unicode, and natively supports long file names.

Disk quotas can be assigned, limiting the amount of disk space users can access on a partition.

Encryption. The NTFS 5.0 file system can automatically encrypt and decrypt file data as it is read and written to the disk.

NTFS can be accessed by Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Note that there are some differences between the NTFS used by Win2K/XP and WinNT; you need to apply Service Pack 4 to Windows NT in order to access NTFS5.

Fault tolerance: file system journaling.

Mounted drives: attach volumes to an empty folder. Operates much like the Assign command from DOS.

Hard links: create an NTFS-based link to a given file.

Sparse files: assign and reserve hard disk space to specific files.

File Streams: multiple data streams are supported and accessible with NTFS.

and there's some more techie stuff at:

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63

Hope that helps,

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Fug

[Tigger]

Cheers for that mate, as the computer is a personal machine which no-one else uses and apart from the odd large video file the file sizes tend to be quite small I think I'll leave it as FAT32.

Thank you for all your help mate - your a star!!! I'm now off to give my whole system the spring-clean it badly needs!!!