Formating external hard drive to work with both Window 98 and XP

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high - 26 Jul 2007 15:00 GMT

I have a 20 GB Western Digital hard drive that was formerly used as an
external drive (slave drive) in a PC with Windows 98. I just attempted to
use it as an external drive for my notebook with XP. Upon recognizing it as
a new drive, XP said that it needed to be reformatted. I clicked "Yes" and
it formatted and now works fine with XP. But now my Windows 98 PC will not
even recognize it as a drive.

Question: Is there a way to format this external hard drive (using XP, since
it is no longer recognized by Windows 98), so that it will work with both XP
and Windows 98? (I want to use it to transfer large amounts of data between
the two.)

Thanks for any ideas.

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John John - 26 Jul 2007 15:07 GMT

You probably formated it NTFS. Format it FAT32.

John

> I have a 20 GB Western Digital hard drive that was formerly used as an
> external drive (slave drive) in a PC with Windows 98. I just attempted to
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
> Thanks for any ideas.

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high - 26 Jul 2007 16:38 GMT

I reformatted it in FAT32, using that option in XP (since the hard drive is
not recognized by my Windows 98 pc). The FAT32 format works OK with XP, but
still isn't recognized as a drive in my Windows 98 pc.

> You probably formated it NTFS. Format it FAT32.
>
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
>>
>> Thanks for any ideas.

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Gary S. Terhune - 26 Jul 2007 17:52 GMT

In Windows XP, using Disk Management, delete all existing partitions. Then
re-attach the drive to the Win98 machine, and use FDISK to partition it.
Best to use one big extended partition and create one or more logical
volumes within that extended partition. Then format the partition(s). If you
need more detailed instructions, just ask.

Signature

Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
www.grystmill.com

>I reformatted it in FAT32, using that option in XP (since the hard drive is
>not recognized by my Windows 98 pc). The FAT32 format works OK with XP, but
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>>>
>>> Thanks for any ideas.

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Don Phillipson - 26 Jul 2007 15:13 GMT

> Question: Is there a way to format this external hard drive (using XP, since
> it is no longer recognized by Windows 98), so that it will work with both XP
> and Windows 98? (I want to use it to transfer large amounts of data between
> the two.)

The drive must be reformatted FAT32 (not NFTS which is the
WinXP default.) WinXP can read and write to both formats.
Win98 does not "see" NTFS drives.

Signature

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

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