Adding 2nd hard drive to Win2K box, NIGHTMARE! HELP!

Damon0306

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Jan 22, 2001
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OK just built this system. This was my first experience building a machine with more then ONE HARD DRIVE.

System SPECS:

ABIT SH6, PIII-850, 512MB RAM
Viper 770, TNT-2, ULTRA (waiting for G-FORCE 3)
Adaptec 29160 Ultra 160 SCSI, Cheetah X-15 18.4G
Plextor UltraPlexWIDE 40X, Plextor 12x4x32 CDRW
Sound Blaster Live VALUE
Linksys Eithernet Card

Clean install of Windows 2000, everthing is good. Now I was told to add a second hard drive to a existing Win2K setup, that you have to use the Disk Manager, under the Administrative Tools.

So after fooling with the program for a bit, I fully understood how it worked.

I hooked up my Maxtor Diamond Max 7200rpm 40G drive, motherboard see's the drive fine and as ATA-100. I install the Intel ATA-100 controller drivers from the ABIT SH6 CD-ROM (i815 chipset motherboard).

That goes fine. Now I go to control panel, go to Administrative Tools, go to Computer Management.

I create volume, then try to format it using the FAT32 file system, (the main CHEETAH SCSI boot drive is also FAT32)

Won't let me format it. If I do normal format it goes all the way up to 99% then when it hits 100% it says "Volume to LARGE" and it fails. If I do quick format it says the same thing.

So I delete the volume, start all over, this time formatting it with the NTFS file system, and it works fine, either with a quick format or normal format.

QUESTION: Why the HECK can't I use the FAT32 FILE SYSTEM on the Maxtor 40G drive?!?!?! Why do I have to use the NTFS file system? I even tried formating the Maxtor and only using 10G of space, just to see if infact that maybe 40G was to large, and I still get the same error message "volume to large" when format is done.

QUESTION :

Are there any dis-advantages of using the NTFS file system on the 2nd drive? I only use it to store MP3's and don't install programs to the drive. Is it true that most programs won't run on a NTFS file system? What if I were to install the Half-Life game, to the NEW drive, would the installation STOP right away because of the NTFS file system?

QUESTION: Do you think the MAXTOR 40G drive has some sort of Compatibility issue with the Windows 2000 Disk Management program, and that is why I can't format the drive with FAT32, but it works FINE with NTFS?

Any info would be great! Calling ALL WINDOWS 2K GURU'S!!

BTW the only way I can format the new Maxtor Drive using FAT32 is if I use FDISK in DOS. But when I do that it changes the Maxtor Drive letter to C and changes the CHEETAH to D, and then my system doesnt boot, and yes I have it set in the BIOS for SCSI for the ONLY device to boot from.
 
G

Guest

Guest
NTFS has no disavantages on a system where only win2k is installed, in fact you should be running NTFS instead of FAT.
 

BrainStorm

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Dec 31, 2007
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Right, you are better to use NTFS over Big partitions, NTFS will perform better.

It's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick!