XP partition

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 5:24 pm

So I have a 126 g partition that needs to be formatted. XP is only allowing it to be NTFS if I choose to format it. Now I downloaded the sp1 pac which should enable larger partitions. Even still I should be able to use fat32 up to a 137 g size. I also have a smaller 8g partition that likewise needs to be formatted and xp allows a choice of fat32 or ntfs. So what gives on the 126g partition?
Or should I just run partition magic ver 8?

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 5:27 pm

no.

win2k and XP won't allow you to format a fat32 partition that large, it maxes out at 32 gb.

You wouldn't a fat32 parition larger than 32gb anyways, you lose way too much in cluster size.

64KB for a 1 byte file is too much.

so, either use smaller partitions for FAT32 drives, or just use NTFS.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 5:58 pm

O.K., then...is there going to be a problem running some partitions in ntfs and others in fat 32? Any compatibility issues?

Winxp would only allow me to divide the 160g drive into 4 partitions so I would still be faced with using part.magic to create smaller partitions.

win xp also says to use only ntfs if only one o.s. is on the comp. Since I have 2 hd, one of which has 98se on it, it would seem I'm locked into fat32, smaller partitions and using pm ver8 to create more partitions to do that. Correct?

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 6:07 pm

IIRC the maximum number of paritions is eight, 4 primary, and 4 extended.

win98 can't read NTFS, but your smart enought to deal with that.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 8:05 pm

Thanks fliptw.

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 8:09 pm

You can only have 1 extended partition, flip. You can have an infinite number of logical partitions inside that extended partition (practically on Windows this number is limited to 26 - the number of physical partitions, due to the partition naming structure).