External HDD- Need to convert to NTFS but what about partitions?

[rwesley_rn]

Have new IOgear external 250GB HDD (GHD835C250) and when connected to XP Pro OS was recognized right away. However file structure is FAT32 and I would like to convert to NTFS (currently I am looking up how to do this) but I did notice something weird. The drive is preformatted into 8 partitions- 7 partitions at 29.2GB and 1 partition at 27.2GB (total of 231GB). I am unsure if this is normal and wether or not a good thing (likely will speed up overall performance).

#1) Do I have to reformat/convert each partition of drive seperately from FAT32 to NTFS? or can I perform one conversion and wipe out all partitions with this conversion?

#2) If the conversion cleans the drive to one block of external space, then how can I setup new partitions or have more control over the drive (ie. create my own partitions- say 4 partitions at 50GB and one partition at 30GB for back up of OS).

Note- No reply from customer service inquiry in 10 days and included disc had no supporting software to convert drive. Also very poor documentation enclosed. Currently using USB 2.0 to connect and plan to update to 1394b very soon.

As this is becoming a more popular topic in forums, i was wondering if anyone might have any links to any good/clear guides they have used. Thank you in advance for any assistance.

 

[Nodsu]

Filesystems live inside partitions. You will have to convert all partitions one by one.

You have so many partitions there because Windows is unable to create FAT32 filesystems bigger than 30GB.

Unless you absolutely have to preserve the data on that disk then you are better off deleting all the existing patitions and creating new ones as you like. Use the Disk Managment utility under Administrative Tools.

 

[rwesley_rn]

Thank you for such a quick reply (I appreciate it!) The drive is still empty because I wanted to figure this out before I loaded it up with stuff. Will delete all partitions and reformat as a whole and then setup some new partitions w/ Admin tools. Thanks!