NTFS & FAT partitions on same hard disk?

After installing NT and converting the primary partition to NTFS, I’m now having problems installing various hardware (i.e. ORB Drive, OnStream digital tape), because of having the file system as NTFS. Is it possible to create a new partition as FAT, and install the necessary software on this partition. Or will this not work because the drives are recognized during the boot process, from the NTFS partition? To get these drives to work, will I need to re-format & re-install NT on FAT?