Formatting an External Hard Drive ~ Help!!

[Vince013]

I have an 80GB (well, actually 74.5GB) Harddrive connected to my laptop through a USB port!

I have Windows XP!

I have installed the driver for this Hard drive successfully, and I am able to format it, I just don't know how to! (I know you right click the hard drive, then select format; but from there I am lost!)

Do I format the entire 74.5 GB in NTFS format? or should it be FAT32?
If I should use FAT32, how am I even going to be able to have that as an option? I mean, it isn't listed in the formatting window! Do I need to install software?

But wait, I heard that you can only compress files on NTFS partitions! Is that true? Another source told me that External Hard Drives and large memory sticks are to be formatted with FAT32 (File Allocation Table) so that I can have files and folders on it, but I just want to check with you guys!

~Vince

 

[PC eye]

Even though XP will install to a Fat32 partition an NTFS type is far superior in the long run. First of all you can't use the XP installer or the Disk Management tool in the Computer Management section of Admistrative Tools found in the Control Panel to format any Fat based partitions. XP is based on the NT not Dos core and shell. When adding an external drive with XP on the host drive you simply go to the Disk Management and look at the right side of the small screen that opens there.

Each installed hard drive will be listed there and you simply right click on the intended to choose the create new partition and later the format options. You can also choose to create more then one partition on the selected drive or delete partitions with the same process. With the driver installed you more then likely will want to create one partition for the entire drive it self if you are going to use it for storage. Once partitioned and formatted Windows will assign a drive letter to it that can changed later if needed.

With an NTFS partition drive access time speeds up. The only files compressed on any drive are those compressed into archives like zip and rar files, cab type files for softwares, and with XP files compressed for restoring Windows along with the installed softwares. Fat16 and Fat32 alike have limits on the size of the partition you can create. Large dimms are not formatted but installed to add more memory to a system. I think some people have been running you around in circles with "BOGUS" information.