I installed a new 200gib hard drive and attempting to partition and create drives on it. The partitions are as follows: e:=11.72gib fat32 h:=11.72gib fat32 i:=24.1gib fat32 j:=24.1gib fat32 k:= 48.83gib ntfs l:= 65.21gib ntfs I wanted all of them to be fat32 but the Computer Manager will not allow me to make the last 2 drive into fat32 it only shows NTFS and option for type of drive. Why is this? I thought I was able to go out to "Z"? Never say Never Romeo Void Firefox 1.5.0.7 A Safer Browser Thunderbird 1.5.0.7

Just out of curiousity, why are you creating several tiny partitions - huh?

It has nothing to do with the drive letter assignment. XP (and 2000) will not let you partition a partition larger than 32gb as seen in Windows with anything but NTFS. Microsoft's reasoning for doing that is because it considers FAT32 to be far more more wasteful, slack space wise, than NTFS is, if the partition has the usual mix of smaller and larger file sizes, but it isn't necessarily wasteful - if you use it mostly for files a lot larger than 32kb, there isn't much difference in slack space between the two. (Slack space is the disk space at the end of a file allocation unit that is not used by the file, and that cannot be used by anything else. FAT32's max file allocation unit size is larger than NTFS's, and above 32gb FAT32 uses it's max 32kb file allocation unit size.) You can use 3rd party utilities to partition partitions larger than 32gb to FAT32 if you want them to be FAT32 and XP will recognize those partitions fine. e.g. Hard drive preparation utilities that may have come with the hard drive on a floppy or floppies or a CD, or they are available for free on the hard drive manufacturer's web site (at least one of the hard drives must be the same brand as the the brand the utility is intended for). In your case, use such a third party utility to change the partition type of the last two partitions to FAT32.

Free Partitioning Software (Partition Editors, Managers, and Recovery Tools) http://www.thefreecountry.com/utili... Super Fdisk http://www.dirfile.com/freeware/dis... QTParted http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/

M$ deliberately put a false 32GB limit on FAT32 to force you to use NTFS, but this limit is only true if you use the M$ CD to do your formatting. Use the software from the HDD manufacturer or one of the 3rd programs listed above. http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm

is it only 32 gb? i remember creating fat32 partitions with xp up to 40 gig (during the installation process, that is). Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'

It's only 32gb plus a bit, binary, as seen in Windows and in most bioses - about 34.25gb manufacturer's size.