How to change partitions/volumes in external hard drive?

I have had a 60G external hard drive that has worked flawlessly for 2 years
with both my desktop computer running Win98SE, and my newer laptop with
Windows XP. This external drive was formatted with FAT 32 and NO PARTITIONS
for all 60G. Because I have a Lot of music files and digital pictures, I
have filled up the 60G drive, so bought an IOGear 160G external drive. This
drive arrived partitioned into 6 partitions, of 20-32G sizes. This is
completely wrong for how I want to use the drive. All my mp3 programs
requires the library to be all in one volume, so I need 60-80G all in one
volume just for music. IOGear support says that Windows XP does not allow
volumes any larger than 60G in FAT 32. (This seems crazy since my older
drive is all one volume and is FAT 32.) Does anyone know how I can collapse
these volumes onto one larger one (say 80-90 G) and have it in a format that
both my Win98SE system and my WindowsXP laptop can both access?

You would get a better answer if you asked this on a Windows XP group, instead of a
Windows 98 group, since it deals with WinXP limits.

My understanding is that Windows XP can mount and read any size FAT32 volume, but
cannot format a FAT32 volume greater than 32GB. Therefore, you must format the
volume using another operating system.

From
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...c_fil_cycz.asp
(or http://snipurl.com/ah2c):

"The 127.5-GB limit on FAT32 volumes imposed in Windows 98 no longer applies to
Windows Me. In Windows Me, using a cluster size of 32 KB, a FAT32 volume can
theoretically be about 8 terabytes. However, the 32-bit fields in the partition
table (and in the FAT32 boot sector) limit the size of an individual volume
(regardless of file system) on a basic MBR disk using a sector size of 512 bytes to
approximately 2 terabytes.
Although Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional can mount FAT32 volumes of any
size, Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional can format FAT32 volumes up to 32 GB
only."
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP W95/98 Systems
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


"busterdog77" wrote in message
...
I have had a 60G external hard drive that has worked flawlessly for 2 years
with both my desktop computer running Win98SE, and my newer laptop with
Windows XP. This external drive was formatted with FAT 32 and NO PARTITIONS
for all 60G. Because I have a Lot of music files and digital pictures, I
have filled up the 60G drive, so bought an IOGear 160G external drive. This
drive arrived partitioned into 6 partitions, of 20-32G sizes. This is
completely wrong for how I want to use the drive. All my mp3 programs
requires the library to be all in one volume, so I need 60-80G all in one
volume just for music. IOGear support says that Windows XP does not allow
volumes any larger than 60G in FAT 32. (This seems crazy since my older
drive is all one volume and is FAT 32.) Does anyone know how I can collapse
these volumes onto one larger one (say 80-90 G) and have it in a format that
both my Win98SE system and my WindowsXP laptop can both access?

You would get a better answer if you asked this on a Windows XP group, instead of a
Windows 98 group, since it deals with WinXP limits.

My understanding is that Windows XP can mount and read any size FAT32 volume, but
cannot format a FAT32 volume greater than 32GB. Therefore, you must format the
volume using another operating system.

From
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...c_fil_cycz.asp
(or http://snipurl.com/ah2c):

"The 127.5-GB limit on FAT32 volumes imposed in Windows 98 no longer applies to
Windows Me. In Windows Me, using a cluster size of 32 KB, a FAT32 volume can
theoretically be about 8 terabytes. However, the 32-bit fields in the partition
table (and in the FAT32 boot sector) limit the size of an individual volume
(regardless of file system) on a basic MBR disk using a sector size of 512 bytes to
approximately 2 terabytes.
Although Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional can mount FAT32 volumes of any
size, Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional can format FAT32 volumes up to 32 GB
only."
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP W95/98 Systems
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


"busterdog77" wrote in message
...
I have had a 60G external hard drive that has worked flawlessly for 2 years
with both my desktop computer running Win98SE, and my newer laptop with
Windows XP. This external drive was formatted with FAT 32 and NO PARTITIONS
for all 60G. Because I have a Lot of music files and digital pictures, I
have filled up the 60G drive, so bought an IOGear 160G external drive. This
drive arrived partitioned into 6 partitions, of 20-32G sizes. This is
completely wrong for how I want to use the drive. All my mp3 programs
requires the library to be all in one volume, so I need 60-80G all in one
volume just for music. IOGear support says that Windows XP does not allow
volumes any larger than 60G in FAT 32. (This seems crazy since my older
drive is all one volume and is FAT 32.) Does anyone know how I can collapse
these volumes onto one larger one (say 80-90 G) and have it in a format that
both my Win98SE system and my WindowsXP laptop can both access?