eluminator
Flashlight Enthusiast
There have been many barriers that needed to be overcome since the first microcomputer hard drives. 137GB is just the latest. I got my first hard dirve around 1983 and it was a 10 MB Miniscribe. I've seen a lot of barriers.
You don't need third party software. XP, or Win2k, can partition and format it with Disk Management. Right click on My Computer, click Manage > Storage > Disk Management. It will create any size partition with NTFS, but will create a maximum of 40GB partition if you specify FAT32. You can use other means to create bigger FAT partitions.
NTFS is more reliable. The reason XP supports FAT32 is for people who still run Win98. FAT32 limits file size to 4GB. This could be a problem if you have video files. I would only use FAT32 if I wanted to sit there and watch the OS scan the entire disk when I boot up after an improper shutdown. Well if you like to discover those "file000.chk" files from time to time, sort of like Christmas presents, then FAT is the way to go.
If you make the drive into one big partition and subsequently decide you want more partitions, you would need third party software like Partition Magic. I never used it because I don't trust it. Windows can delete and create partitions, but it can't resize an existing one except by deletion and creation, which would destroy any data on the partition.
I've got 15 partitions on my two internal drives and I haven't run out of letters yet. I suppose if I plugged in all my external drives at the same time I would have to switch to the russian alphabet.
You don't need third party software. XP, or Win2k, can partition and format it with Disk Management. Right click on My Computer, click Manage > Storage > Disk Management. It will create any size partition with NTFS, but will create a maximum of 40GB partition if you specify FAT32. You can use other means to create bigger FAT partitions.
NTFS is more reliable. The reason XP supports FAT32 is for people who still run Win98. FAT32 limits file size to 4GB. This could be a problem if you have video files. I would only use FAT32 if I wanted to sit there and watch the OS scan the entire disk when I boot up after an improper shutdown. Well if you like to discover those "file000.chk" files from time to time, sort of like Christmas presents, then FAT is the way to go.
If you make the drive into one big partition and subsequently decide you want more partitions, you would need third party software like Partition Magic. I never used it because I don't trust it. Windows can delete and create partitions, but it can't resize an existing one except by deletion and creation, which would destroy any data on the partition.
I've got 15 partitions on my two internal drives and I haven't run out of letters yet. I suppose if I plugged in all my external drives at the same time I would have to switch to the russian alphabet.
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