External hard drive partitions.

N

NaughtyMonkey

New Member
Is it possible to make two partitions on my external hard drive. One being ntsf and the other being fat32. When I plug it into my computer will it show has two diffrent external hard drives or how will this work? Thanks.

If your wondering why I'm asking this, its because the xbox 360 only reads fat32 partitions and I need a ntsf partition because you can not copy files onto a fat32 partition that is over 4 gigs. :(
 
Windows either XP or Vista won't see Fat32 partitions without the original software installed for the drive itself. But you can use any drive tool to shrink the factory Fat32 down and simply create an NTFS second partition to fill in the space. Here I simply deleted the factory and created a new NTFS XP/Vista ready without need for the software on an external usb drive here(WD MyBook Essential).
 
So my computer will read it has two hard drives or what? I have windows xp but I mainly need the fat32 for my xbox 360 and the ntsf part for all my files and stuff.
 
Once you see a second partition(NTFS) created that will seen as a new logical drive and appear as a new drive with a letter assigned by Windows in any explorer window. When replugging it in if not plugged in the installer will come up each time for the Fat volume while the NTFS will simply be seen as a new drive right off by Windows.

For most strictly Windows users the advice would be to reformat or remove the factory Fat partition seen on external drives to then see an NTFS partition readliy seen. For you there shrinking the factory Fat32 down to the size needed leaving that as the first partition with the software and then creating the second one for the main storage would be a basic three step process of:
1)shrinking factory volume down in size
2) + 3)creating the new NTFS volume and seeing that formatted to be made ready for use.

When seen in an explorer windows or even the Disk Management tool both partitions will each be seen as a healthy Fat32 or NTFS volume with a drive letter assigned just as would any other drive on the system. Expect to see the icon for the brand of drive next to that however like a blue icon with WD is seen for Western Digital models and so forth.

To give you an idea of how that will look and the Classic look still applying in Vista as well for the most part the image here will show 3 internal HDs along with the WD external drive here. Why are 5 drives listed? One sata sees a second partition yet still appears as a separate drive. The same applies with an external drive.

 
Remember if you are going to keep a Fat volume on the drive be sure to grab a copy of the software available usually in a zip file to have onhand. With NTFS however and going to replug the drive in XP will tend to see the auto play prompt come up while the installer for that software will appear.

If some file for the software is lost you simply unpack the archive from the support site onto the Fat partition mainly. It won't hurt to see that on the NTFS volume as well.
 
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