FAT 32 format with XP

My friend has an Image Tank - essentially an external drive with built in software to download the contents of a Microdrive or CF card from a digital camera when in the field.

It has a 40 Gb drive which must be formatted FAT/FAT32 and his PC is running XP which makes reformatting a bit of a chore - i.e he has to get access to a Win ME m/c.

I know that XP formats all drives > 32 Gb as NTFS - if the drive was partitioned - 2 x 20 Gb would XP then give the option to format as FAT?

TIA

 

Newt,

Thanks "“ the situation is this :

The hard drive of the Image Tank can be partitioned on a Win 98 > > 2000 PC using FDISK; file system must be FAT "“ the drive is 40 Gb so XP cannot be used for a single partition.

This drive is simply formatted to FAT32 on a Win ME m/c.

The inbuilt software of the Image Tank is able to switch between partitions if they are present, but there is this warning in the user manual :

“ In non-partition mode, the HDD can only be accessed when it is installed in the Image Tank. If users want to connect the HDD to the PC by using a regular IDE cable, the data in the HDD cannot be accessed any more because there is no partition table on the HDD. " This is irrelevant to this situation, but I included it anyway!.

When a transfer is made from a digital camera via a memory card or Microdrive a folder is created on the hard drive which includes the folders generated by the camera.

After downloading the image files from the Image Tank to the PC it is sometimes not possible to delete the folder created by the Image Tank as the Image Tank can protect the folders it creates "“ the manufacturer’s site FAQ suggests getting round this by performing a quick format on the drive.

As my friend’s PC is running XP Pro (no other OS installed) and since XP will not format > 32 Gb in anything other than NTFS this problem can only be resolved by gaining access to a non XP m/c, which is not very convenient.

My thought was to partition the drive into 2 x 20 in the hope that he would then be able to do a quick format when required on his XP m/c.

I don’t have access to the Image Tank right now "“ it is back with the suppliers as it fails to transfer files from a 1 Gb Microdrive "“ works fine with CF and the Microdrive works fine in direct transfer from the camera to the PC or via a card reader, but that is another story!

 

Newt,

Thanks - I'll try that when we get the Image Tank back

 

Newt,

Not quite with you on this one - we have the Image Tank back (still doesn't work, but that's another story) and I thought I'd look at your comment:

Went into Disk Manager - the only option was to format as NTFS.

Win XP Pro is on C drive, the Image Tank (40 Gb USB drive) comes up as H, so it should be possible on that basis to format/reformat it as FAT32? Am I missing something here?