Please help - Partitioning external drive

[Starkler (Geoff)]

I let the pc store person persuade me to buy an exclosure and a HD to create a usb external drive instead of waiting for a pre made unit.

Being a brand new HD i have to create a partition and format it but win2k wont allow me to create the partition.

I go to MyComputer(right click) > manage > disk management , and right click on the unallocated space graphic. The wanted menu option " Create partition" is greyed out !!

An hour of googling only turned up that this can happen if you are not logged in as administrator but I AM

At least I think i am. How can i know for sure?

Please help

[h0ughy (David)]

first you have to recognise the disk (and no not just cause you bought it)

then it will allow you to create the partition and make it logical, assign a drive letter and format it, then your off.

[mojo (Terry)]

"my computer"->right click->manage->system information->system summary

somewhere in that list will be a "user name" value. ie. something like
User Name: starler/Administrator

Or if you can open "Users and passwords" from the control panel, you're probably logged in as administrator.

And if that disk is larger than 128GB but win2k sees it only as 128GB, read this.

[Starkler (Geoff)]

The drive is currently being formatted in ntfs on my neighbours pc which runs xp. The create partition menu option was not greyed out on his machine.

Terry im logged in as a user that belongs in the administrator group. I even earlier logged in using the administrator name to no avail.

Houghy what do you mean by recognise the drive? My machine can see the drive and knows its size, displaying it as unallocated space.

[Starkler (Geoff)]

All done on another pc. Why it wouldnt partition on mine I still dont know but at least its all going now.

Thanks

[Jackson42South (Paul)]

Keep in mind that you must Format an external drive with FAT32, not NTFS, if you ever want to connect it to a PC running Windows 95 or 98.
If you only connect to PCs running Windows 2k, XP or Vista, NTFS is fine.

[Dennis]

From memory, this is what I once did (if I remember correctly):

• Start
• Control Panel
• Administrative Tools
• Computer Management
• Disk Management

This view showed me the drive which had not yet been formatted, and it allowed me to “Right Click” the drive and format it from the fly out menu. See attached file.

It was a while ago, so I hope my recollection is correct and I am not misleading our trusting readers!

Cheers

Dennis

[Photon]

When in Disk Management there is an item under the 'Action' menu (next to 'File' menu) with an option 'ReScan Disks' I have had to use this to get XP to recongise an external disk sometimes before I was able to Format etc. Some thing to try next time.
Regards IanG

[vindictive666 (John)]

what about booting into DOS and using Fdisk ?

you can get the software of the internet to do ntfs ect ect i had to a couple of years ago ?