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XP PRO NTFS Master Drive/ FAT32 Slave

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5 replies

by leonrofer

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I had installed Win XP Pro on my desktop using a brand new Quantum Drive. The installation went smoothly. XP forced me to format the drive with NTFS file system. My orginal drive that came with the system was formatted under ME and has FAT32 file system. Although XP knows that the FAT32 drive exists it does not assign a logical drive letter makking the drive inaccessible. I still a lot of data that I would like to transfer to the new drive and use the old drive as a hot back up, Is there a way to that?

5 replies

by thechas

Double check the master slave jumpers on both drives.
Make sure that the BIOS settings for hard drive detection does not have the slave drive disabled, or mis-identified.
XP should find the drive, and setup to read it properly, if the BIOS is properly identifying the drives.
XP can read ntsf, FAT32, FAT16.
I use a hot swap bay, and often add a drive in temporarily with no problems.

XP should not have "forced" you to use ntsf for the file system.
That is the "default". But, you should have had the option to use FAT32.

Chas

by r. a. caluste

do the ff:

a) go to control panel/administrative tools/computer management/ disk management
b) see if the fat32 drive is there. if no logical drive letter has been assigned, you may assign one from here.

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