hi, i bought a digital hdd recorder that houses a 2.5" hard drive, i have used a 80gb toshiba drive, it can be used as a storage device or a media player and recorder through AV input and AV output for nearly every movie file type imaginable.... also it does slide show on photos and plays music. the problem i have is that if i format the drive on my pc in ntfs my files dont show up on the user interface when i plug into my tv via AV out. i can format the drive in fat using a menu on the device itself, but when i add my files onto the drive after ive done so i reach 19gb and i get a message saying that there is not enough free disk space! have i inadvertantly partitioned my drive? can i make 80gb available if formatted in fat?? any ideas? thanks dan

I am not familiar with the capabilities of your digital HDD recorder. Is it possible that it is limited to using a 20GB HDD? I have heard of such limits being imposed. You say you want to format using FAT. I believe you mean FAT32 as FAT (actually FAT16) has a maximum limit of 2GB per partition. WINXP will allow you to format a hard drive as FAT or FAT32. Windows XP supports FAT 16 partitions limited to 4 GB (Limited to 2 GB in DOS based operating systems like Windows 9X/Me). Windows XP also supports FAT 32 partitions which can be created up to a maximum of 32 GB (they can be larger if they were made with Windows 98/Me), Does your PC have a floppy drive and do you have acces to Win98SE boot floppy (or do you have access to a win98SE bootable CD)? If you do you can boot from one these 2 disks and format the HDD on your PC and create FAT32 partitions greater than 32GB. However as your hard drive is a laptop HDD (2.5") you will need an Laptop IDE adapter to be able to connect it to your PCs IDE port. Alternatively you can buy one of these 2.5" USB HDD caddies which will also work. Finally remember that if you want to create a partition size greater that 64GB then you will not only need to use the win98se boot disk, but you will also need the updated version of fdisk because the old fdisk does not recognize full size of hard disks Larger than 64 GB. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

Hi Dan, =========================================== I agree with mosaddique, very good reply. Not so long ago I formatted a 120 GB HD with FAT32 (File Allocation Table 32). I used an old DOS computer and the updated Fdisk. Had no problems. Cheers de Peter

Just FYI, you may want to format the drive as NTFS if you are going to use it for recording video. FAT 32 has a file size limit of 4 gig and if your recording with a high bitrate or a long program you could hit that 4 gig limit very easily.

Go to the website of the maker of your hard drive and download a drive prepartion utility that when executed on your computer will make a floppy that can be booted to prepare your drive. Delete the existing partition(s). Partition the drive FAT32 but leave 8mb of unpartitioned space at the end of it if the utility doesn't do that automatically - that is what XP and 2000 do, and that makes it 100% compatible with those operating systems. Then format the drive with the utility. The drive will then all be FAT32, and XP and other operating systems that recognize FAT32 will have no problem seeing all of it. You can do similar with a Win 98 or 98SE Startup Disk, by using Fdisk and Format at the prompt when the disk has finished loading, but the Fdisk program must be the updated version - the original Fdisk on the Windows CD or the the floppy that originally came with the CD, and the one put there automatically when you make a Startup Disk, are limited to partitioning hard drives no larger than 64gb - beyond that it starts over and subtracts 64gb, or multiples of 64gb, from whatever the size of the drive is. If you have access to a computer with Win 98 or 98SE on it and Fdisk has not been updated yet, get the update here: http://download.microsoft.com/downl... If you don't you need to get the updated version of Fdisk for 98/98SE - it has a file date of 5/18/00 (the date may be incorrect if it's on the web - as long as it isn't the same as other original Windows files) and a size of exactly 64,460 bytes when you look at it's Properties. If you use a Startup disk to Fdisk the hard drive, you must copy the updated Fdisk from C:\Windows\Command (or wherever you have it) to the floppy. If you boot/install Windows from the Win 98/98SE CD, you cannot Fdisk/Format a hard drive larger than 64 gig - use the Startup disk with updated Fdisk instead.

Tubesandwires states ...."but leave 8mb of unpartitioned space at the end of it if the utility doesn't do that automatically - that is what XP and 2000 do, and that makes it 100% compatible with those operating systems. "..... This is not necessary and neither is it about compatibilty with Win2k or Winxp. That requirement is only there for the case where you may be converting drives to dynamic volumes at a later date. Without this 8MB space dynamic volumes cannot be created. Further this is also if the partitions are NTFS not FAT32. If you are never intending to do convert your partitions later to NTFS and then change them to dynamic volumes, which I suspect is the case here, then there is no need to waste that space by leaving it unpartitioned. This explains why 8MB is left unpartitioned: Setup Reserves Disk Space for Upgrading to Dynamic Disk ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

mossaddique Thanks for providing an explanation of why the 8mb unpartitioned space is there - I was not able to determine why it was there previously, even after spending many hours searching. When you use the operating system to attempt to re-partition the single partition on a drive that has only one partition, or the last partition on a drive that has more than one partition, 2000 and XP will not let you partition the entire space, that is, the unpartitioned 8mb at the end of if it was already there, or it will force there being 8mb unpartitioned space if it wasn't already there. XP generates a error message along the lines of "This space is reserved for Windows blah blah blah" - I'm not sure whether the message is the same in 2000. If they weren't aware of that fact before, that's the normal situation where users discover that 8mb unpartitioned space is already there, or that Windows mandates that it is supposed to be there if it wasn't there already. Yes, you can partition the entire space with third party utilities and use the drives in 2000 and XP and not experience any problems in normal use, in XP or 2000 itself. BUT I have found that it WILL cause problems in certain circumstances with certain utilities or programs, and if there is a possibility you may ever need to you those utilities or programs, you should do as 2000 and XP do themselves and leave the last 8mb unpartitioned! I first discovered these problems while preparing an 80gb and a 160gb drive for a friend for MCE 2005 (essentially XP Pro with some features left out plus more multimedia support and the "master" Media Center application, etc.). She and I wanted the drives to be entirely FAT32, and I chose to make 3 partitions on each drive. They are Seagate drives, so I used the latest floppy version of the Seagate drive preparation utility to prepare the drives, and filled the drives with FAT32 partitions, including all of last partition on each drive. When I selected the operating system I was going to be using as XP, there was a vague message that I should use the Windows version of the utility if I was going to be preparing the drive(s) for use in XP. Since both drives were used, though not that old, I wanted to make sure they were okay before I installed MCE 2005 on them, so I used Seagate's diagnostic utility on them (Seatools Desktop Edition?), and ran both the quick and long diagnostics on them. The drives were fine physically and logically onboard the drive itself, but the utility reported a data organization problem of some unspecifed sort with the last partition on both drives?? I looked at both drives with Partition Magic 8. It too found a problem with the last partition on both drives - what it said I don't recall, but it would not allow me to do anything to those partitions for some reason. I looked at both drives with a floppy booted freeware partition managing utility that is Win 2000/XP aware - I don't recall the name of it at this moment - it marked the last partition on each drive with a ?? or similar and indicated something unspecified was wrong with it. It indicated it did not understand those partitions, and could not do anything with them?? I looked at both drives on another computer that has XP Pro on it. XP didn't see anything wrong with the drives. In Disk Management, I re-partitioned the last partition on the 80gb drive, which is less than 32gb, to FAT32, and discovered it would not let me fill the entire space - it forced the last 8mb to be unpartitioned. I was unaware that XP required that up until that point. Eventually I tried the floppy Seagate diagnostic utility on the 80gb drive after having partitioned the last partition in XP Pro, which had forced the last 8mb to be unpartitioned, using both the quick and the longer diagnostics. NO PROBLEMS FOUND in the data organization of the last partition! I looked at the drive with Partition Magic 8 - NO PROBLEMS FOUND with the last partition! I used the floppy bootable freeware XP/2000 aware partition managing utility to examine the 80gb drive - NO ?? or whatever for the last partition! NO PROBLEMS FOUND! Later, in XP Pro I re-partitioned the last partition on the 160gb drive, and discovered that XP leaves the last 8mb unpartitioned on that drive too, despite the drive having twice the capacity overall. The partition was made NTFS because it was larger than 32gb, so later I used some other third party program to convert it to FAT32 - I did some experimenting and discovered the unpartitioned space at the end only has to be as close as you can get it to 8mb, and can be one step less, not necessarily exactly 8mb. ..... Months later I set up Win 2000 on a hard drive for another person. I discovered it does the same thing - 8mb is left unpartitioned at the end of the drive. ............ THEREFORE - you CAN partition the entire drive when you use something other than XP or 2000 to prepare the drive, but if you ever need to use utilities that are XP or 2000 aware that EXPECT the last 8mb to be unpartitioned, you WILL likely run into problems when you try to use those utilities or programs. E.g. Most brand name hard drive supplied drive preparation and diagnostic utilities are modules of Ontrack's Disk Manager program modified to suit the hard drive brand's interface requirements. I suspect you will have problems with the diagnostic utilities of any of them having problems like I described if the 8mb unpartitioned space is not there.