USB disk discovery

[Plagued]

Alright i have a problem caused by me but hopefully solved by you. I was using a program to re-partition my external drive. it had 260gig used of 1TB so i was re-partitioning it to be 300gig fat32 and the rest unformatted but it was interrupted and now windows (XP Sp2) wont detect it. The drive was Fat32 1TB, but i was trying to split it. I actually am willing to format the entire drive, no data on it is worth saving but i cant find the drive, what do i do?

 

[DelJo63]

Unless you need to connect to an OSx or Linix system, you are advised to format NTFS
as there are more services and better storage untilization factors.

Windows will not format FAT32 > 32gb anyway and that's just brain dead, as other systems
can format much larger partitions -- but just don't go that way.

 

[Plagued]

Yeah it came as a Fat32 and i didnt realize it till i had packed it full of apps... Thus why i was shrinking the size of the fat32 section. I want to format NTFS but nothing in the world can even see the drive. ive tried everything suggested on techspot and google, ive tried most programs and still nothing can see this thing. how do you recover drives when you botch a partition?

 

[LookinAround]

Suggest you first do this

> See [post=875300]How to Cleanup and Remove old USB Mass Storage Drivers[/post]
==> Be sure you disconnect all your USB storage devices before you run the DriveCleanupTool

> Now open Device Manager and then replug the drive into a USB port
==> Do you hear the familiar ding-dong when you connect the USB device?
==> Do you see the Device Manager display refresh itself? or does it not change at all?

 

[Plagued]

you sir... are magic

 

[LookinAround]

Glad it helped

And now that you can see your drive again:
Re: Choosing between FAT vs NTFS you also need consider how you're going to use that drive and the types (if any) of non-computer devices you might want to connect it to. Some gaming / portable / handheld devices will only work with FAT so determine if that might apply to your case

/* edit */
oh. and, yes, you can format your 1tb HD FAT32 if you should want/need to. You just don't use Windows to do it