formatting external drive

[homer75]

I have an external drive which I made up using a usb/firewire casing. I can't get the drive to format to its capacity of 160Gb -- it won't go beyond 32Gb no matter what I try. I am reasonably competent with pcs and it has beaten me so far. Anyone got any idea if I am missing something obvious ?

[kempie]

A 32GB limit is normally attributable to jumper settings on the harddisk, to the BIOS, or to formatting a slave drive using FAT-32 within Windows.

Although not a slave, maybe the third scenario also applies to external drives.

Can you rule out all of the above as the cause of your problem?

[Haggisdj]

What operating system are you using ??

[vehelpfulguy]

My guess is you are formatting it as FAT32 which has a 32Gb limit in Windows.

Try using NTFS.

[homer75]

Thanx all for help but it's not anything mentioned so far _jumper settings, bios or FAT 32.

[kempie]

My next approach would be to open up the PC and connect the drive internally.

[dodgyshirt]

How are you formatting the drive.

If running XP, in Control Panel select:- Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management. Then in the bottom RH pane, right click the appropriate drive and select 'format' from the list of options.

Alternatively go to the bottom of This page where you will find Format and Backup programmes freely available as downloads.