Well, the 'interesting exercise' continues.  I didn't expect much from Partition Magic and sure enough, it lived up (or should that be down?) to my expectations.

Converting my 'floating' USB2 drive from FAT32 to NTFS in my workshop computer went ok but I ended up with two partitions instead of the original one.

I wanted to merge these two partitions back into one, so loaded Partition Magic 8 and, with my drive out of it's USB2 box and connected as an IDE drive, I attacked it.

At first the process looked like it might be straightforward, but pretty soon PM starting throwing curve balls.  Like telling me how I needed to 'redistribute space' to accomodate the merging partitions.  Say what?

As usual with PM this isn't explained for dummies like me, so I had to bull my way through it.  Finally it seemed that we'd agreed on a method so I hit the final 'OK' and kicked off the reboot, during which PM did it's thing in whatever passes for DOS in XP.

But after that - oh dear.  My workshop machine refused to reboot.  I switched it off, disconnected my newly converted, merged, sanitised drive, put it back into it's USB box and re-connected it to my main PC.  Result? - no probs, works ok, all the data seems intact.

But now I have a dead Workshop computer, it won't boot at all.  PM somehow managed to screw up the host system during the exercise.  (And naturally I didn't opt for the PM 'make rescue disks' option).  

Later:  Just had another look at my deceased workshop machine.  It has an 8gb drive which had been split into two FAT32 partitons.  W98SE was on one with XPPro on the other.  

FDisk now reports that both partitions are of an 'UNKNOWN' type, rather than FAT32, so I assume PM somehow managed to change the host file system while it was supposed to be working only on the ancillary drive.

I'd chalk it up to experience except I've run out of chalk :--))

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ian 
  Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Re-format USB drive


  .............Regarding my original query about formatting my USB drive, here's a followup for those who might be interested.

  I have a FAT32 40gb Maxtor 7200 rpm in a USB 2.0 case, running as a satellite of an XP Pro NTFS main system.  My question was:  Can I convert this drive to NTFS (my original was badly worded - I'd said 'format', when I meant 'convert') from it's location as a satellite drive, and also could the conversion be done without data loss?

  In the finish I decided to 'just do it'.  But I hedged my bet; First I removed the drive from it's box and cloned it onto another 40gb drive.

  Then I attached the clone to an IDE ribbon on another XP system and converted it to NTFS from there, using the native Drive Manager.  (Interestingly, THAT XP system is itself formatted in FAT32)

  Anyway, it seemed to handle the conversion to NTFS ok, tho I haven't yet checked to see if the data is intact.  But there's one little hitch which I hadn't expected.  

  The drive is 40gb of which 28gb was used.  After the conversion I ended up with a 28gb NTFS partition and the balance marked as 'unallocated'.  Not sure of what else to do, I formatted that partition as NTFS so now I have two partitions instead of the one I started with.

  My next task is to find a way to get the drive back to one 40gb partition.  A job for Partition Magic I guess (shudder - never had much luck with this software).  Anyway, it's been an interesting exercise.

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