Hard drive formatting problem

[Grazer]

Ok here goes

 

I'm trying to put an old 40GB drive into my mp3 player (Neo Car Jukebox). It was originally my slave drive on the PC but I'm not really using it, so I though it would be better than the 20GB drive in there.

 

So I transferred 30GB of mp3s onto it and put it in the mp3 player which said "no FAT16 or FAT32 partition detected"

 

I then did My Computer-Manage-Disk Management and saw that the drive had something like NTFS as the file system, not FAT32. I deleted everything from it and tried to reformat it, but it wouldn't let me change the file system to FAT32.

 

Then some idiot pressed a button that said delete partition

 

Now winXP doesn't even seem to see the drive

 

Help

[eldudereno]

Have you still got Windows ME on your computer? If you've ungraded from Me to XP or you've just installed XP on top of ME you usually get the option to boot from ME when your pc is starting to boot. You see, XP doesn't like FAT16 or FAT32 but ME does. Try booting from ME if you can.

 

You could also try downloading a Me bootdisk from bootdisk.com, the drive might then be picked up when booting from this disk.

 

[Grazer]

I went from win98 to xp

[MONKEYmark]

do you have partition magic, it converts between file formats. i have a windows 8 in 1 that has it on just boot from cd and change it to old file system.

[Grazer]

do you have partition magic

 

No, but I will in a minute

[Markie]

You sorted this now Grazer?

[Pete]

Do the Computer-Manage-Disk Management again, delete the partition and recreate it, but select FAT32 instead of NTFS.

Format it then that should be it.

[Grazer]

Do the Computer-Manage-Disk Management again, delete the partition and recreate it, but select FAT32 instead of NTFS.

Format it then that should be it.

 

It wont let me change from NTFS - when I'm creating a new partition there is a drop down menu for file system, but there is only NTFS in it. No mention of FAT 32.

 

Computers are like supras - they're great when they work

[Markie]

Have the drive you want formatted in PC. Use something like Windows 98 boot disk with fdisk and format on. Boot off floppy. Run it, and choose the disk you want to format, making sure its the correct one. Then delete any partition on it, and then re-create a primary partiton and then format it.

[imi]

No, but I will in a minute

 

Partition Magic should do the trick here...

 

 

[Pete]

From here

 

You can do this by using the Windows XP Startup disks or, if your computer supports a bootable CD-ROM, by using the Recovery Console tool on the Windows XP CD-ROM. Reformatting or repartitioning a disk deletes all of the data that is on the disk, so make sure that you back up your data before you reformat the disk.

 

To use Recovery Console to reformat a drive, follow these steps:

 

1. Start the computer by using the Windows XP CD-ROM or the Startup disks.

 

2. When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press F10.

 

3. In Recovery Console, specify the appropriate installation, and then log on by using your Administrator password.

 

4. Type map, and then press ENTER.

 

5. Note the drive that you want to reformat. The drive letters may be different in Recovery Console from what they are in Windows XP.

 

5. Type format x: /fs:fat32, where x is the letter of the drive that you want to format and FAT32 is the file system that you want to use, and then press ENTER.

 

6. Type y and then press ENTER to confirm your choice. When the formatting process is finished, type exit and then press ENTER, to restart the computer.

[Grazer]

Sorted - thanks everyone

 

It was incredibly simple with Partition Magic (evaluation copy obviously). Now I've got 40GB of mp3's in the car.

 

And I know what to do when I get the 120GB drive