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Hard drive format

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by chd.pnr

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I am fairly new to NT4 and have always worked with server HD sizes in Mb's. Where I work have now ordered a new data server with a 75Gb HD. When I tried previously to partition and format an 8Gb HD with a partition greater than 3.9Gb it would not format and I had to stick to under 4Gb.
I have tried both NTFS & Fat16 but with same results. Obviously I can't set a 75Gb to such small sizes. I am looking at c to 4Gb, D to 20Gb both set to NTFS & the rest as FAT16 for open storage of user programs.Grateful for any help in my lack of knowledge for up-to-date setups. Thanks.

15 replies

by gigelul

Hi,
You can make partition larger than 4Gb, but first install your OS on a NTFS partition and then from "Administrative tools\disk administrator" you can create the rest of the partitions as you wish.

by alpha-male

Create your OS partition, install NT and convert the partition to NTFS in the installation process. Leave the rest of the drive unformatted.

Then go under administrative tools to the disk administrator and you can partition the unpartitioned space as needed.

by thechas

I believe that NT forces you to have a maximum of 4GB for the "boot" partition (C:). I believe that there are utilities that can work around this.

The "C:" drive will be the "primary DOS partition", the rest of the drive will be in the "extendedDOS partition".
You will partition the disk space as "Logical" drives in the extended partition.

I may be wrong, but I thought FAT16 was limited to 2GB per drive.
If you want drives larger than 2GB, you will need to use NTSF, or FAT32.

Chas

by rabbit_runner

Hi, There are several possibilities.
1. NT4, on an initial install, will ONLY allow the maximum size of the system partition to be 4 gig. During the install, you select the 4 gig size, it is formated into FAT. If you wanted the drive to be NTFS,after a reboot, the drive would be converted.
2. If you choose the above option, after the install, and after applying SP4 (or higher), you can open the Disk Administrator, and then format the remainder of the hard drive. If you choose NTFS, the size can be almost any size you choose. Please keep in mind, that you can create up to a maximum of 4 Primary partitions. Your system partition is the first Primary. You can add up to 3 additional partitions. Or you can choose to create an Extended partition. Then Within the Extended partition, you can create as many additional Virtural partitions as you desire. An Extended partition takes the place of one Primary partition.
3. There is another possibility, but it will take another system. Ifyou have another NT4 system, take the 75Gig drive from the new computer and slave it to the other NT4 computer. Once the drive is recognized, you can create your first Primary partition as an NTFS volume. You can make it any size you desire. For example you choose to make it 20 Gig. Once it is formatted, you shut down the NT4 computer, remove the 75 Gig drive and put it back into the new system. Now, when you attempt to install your NT4 operating system, it will find the NTFS volume and place the installation there. This is a way around the limitations that NT4 makes on an initial install.

The maximimum size of a FAT partition is 4 Gig. Windows NT only uses 3 types of file systems, FAT, NTFS and CDFS.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to create a FAT16 greater than 4 gig on an NT4 computer.

If the partition is NTFS, and you share the drive on the network, it will be available for others to use.

by steve penn

You can have larger partitions when installing, but you must install the atapi.sys (sp4 version) as a 3rd party driver when installing the OS. Press F6 I beleive when it detects system config.

Better still try using PowerQuest Server Magic.
It'sPartition Magic's bigger brother for servers. Works a treat.

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