XP is having problems with logical drives on FAT32

Question

I've got a Dimension 4300, 1.7GHz P4, which originally came with a 60GB Western Digital. I've recently upgraded a lot of things, which included a 250GB hard drive. I wanted to stay on FAT32 so I partitioned the disk into 2x120GB drives and one 10GB drive. The thing is, I started having problems. I should first mention that in addition to the 250GB disk I've also got a 40GB disk partitioned into 2x20GB drives, one for Windows ME and one for Windows XP Home. I created all the partitions (both on the 40GB disk and the 250GB disk) using FDisk on Windows ME. The strange thing was, Windows XP couldn't see the small 10GB drive, and claimed that that part of the disk was unpartitioned (it even allowed me to create a new partition). After a few days I also started losing files, and some folders had been changed to 32kb files without extensions. By this point I was really confused, so I got the hard drive replaced, but now I'm getting exactly the same problems, and I only ever lose files on the large 250GB disk, never the 40GB one. Does Windows XP Home have a problem with detecting more than one logical drive on FAT32?
Someone suggested to me to scrap the 10GB drive, and not assign that space to a logical drive nor the extended partition. That would mean having 48% assigned to a primary partition, and 48% assigned to an extended partition, and 100% of the extended partition assigned to a logical drive. That would leave me with 2x120GB drives (which is well in the 124.5GB limit for FAT32) and with the remaining 10GB completely unused, but I don't mind sacrificing that. But does it really sound like that'll work? Does it sound like a problem with the way FDisk is creating the partitions, or the way that XP is handling them?

Thanks in advance,
Peter

DJ_ShiSaS · Answer

as far as i know.. on Fat32.. .you can only have 2 partitions.. primary and logical... inside of the logical then you can put as much extended as you want...
it should work in that way...
i know that winxp is able to create more than one logical partition but that is just not so good at all, as you can see

mrneglect · Answer

Well you've got the idea, but the wrong terminology. You can have one primary and one extended, and as many logical drives in the extended partition as you like. But I already knew that, sorry. I'm now getting further problems. Just before I get to the XP/ME boot menu I get a message along the lines of 'Disk 1 on the primary EIDE cable is functioning outside of normal specifications. Please backup all of your data and replace your hard drive.' I have done nothing to the disk that I haven't done previously, so I have no idea why this message is coming up. In addition, when the disk has to partitions, XP claims that it is only 128GB in size. However, if I create a primary, an extended and a logical drive that collectively uses more than 128GB, it forces XP to see the entire disk of 250GB. But when I delete those partitions in XP the disk capacity suddenly jumps back to 128GB. What the heck's going on? I'm so frustrated here.   - Peter

mrneglect · Answer

After creating one primary partition using 48% of the disk, one extended partition using 48% of the disk, and one logical drive using 100% of the extended partiton I have two 120GB drives formatted to FAT32, and 10GB unallocated to any partitions. The only difference between this and the original configuration is that I no longer have a second 10GB logical drive, as it could not be detected on Windows XP and I think that may have caused problems (well it's can't be good can it). I also no longer get the error message just after BIOS initialisation, which is a relief.
I hope that the fact that XP and ME agree on the drives that are present should clear things up, but I'm not at all confident. Although XP sees all drives, it refuses to see the remaining unallocated 10GB, and doesn't let me create a partition, so it seems as though problems and corruptions could still arise.
I can't be the only person who's having problems with a 250GB drive. I must be doing something wrong. Please help!

- Peter

Message Edited by mrneglect on 08-05-2005 08:47 PM

mrneglect · Answer

Well an upgrade to SP2 means XP can now see my unallocated 10GB, but I'm still no closer to having any confindence in this configuration being any less prone to corruption than the last.

DJ_ShiSaS · Answer

wait.. theres something missing.. u know that even if the hdd says 20gb.. only 18 can be used. this is the conversion between binary and human numbers or something. so.. maybe.. even if you have 250gb, less than that can be used only... NOW.. Fat32 could be worse for this 'conversion'

mrneglect · Answer

Well, the main loss of space is due to how much is allocated to the file allocation table. For example, my 120GB drives each donate 8.21GB to the FAT, so I only have 111.79GB that I can actually write to. But that's largely irrelevant. What I really need to know is if anyone else has had problems with constant corruption on large disk drives (250GB of higher) on XP and how they resolved it. Whether it's because FDisk can't actually make partitions larger than 99,999MB (though it doesn't refuse to, various parts of the programme would indicate that it can't) or whether XP has problems with large FAT32 partitions, or something like that. I need some assurance that it won't just start corrupting after a week like all the other times.

- Peter

Windows General

XP is having problems with logical drives on FAT32

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