Ultrabay drive install.

[ThinkPad]

I got a second HDD for the ultra bay cradle. I slip it in and it picks it up, but for some reason I cannot access this second drive....

[ThinkPad]

This is the hard drive im using http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145092

thats in the ultrabay 2nd HDD adapter. Device manager picks it up, but I cannot see an image under my computer.

[ThinkPad]

Ok I figured it out. I have a 100gig drive, but how come I dont have the full amount. The maximim partition available was about 93 gigs....

[bill bolton]

Device manager picks it up, but I cannot see an image under my computer.

You probably need to go into the "Disk Management" section of the Windows XP "Computer Management" utility and initialise the disk.

Re the disk size, 93GB of actual formatted storage space is about right for a disk with a raw capacity of 100GB.

Cheers,

Bill

[ThinkPad]

Thanks.
I got it partitioned and everything, just wondering about the mysterious 7 gigs. Works like a charm

[davidspalding]

You're not missing 7 gb, it's a difference in how the formatted space is measured, versus the raw space that the drive manufacturer makes on the platters. There are previous threads on how 1 MB isn't really 1 millions bytes, or something like that.

Bottom line ... you've got the whole drive available to you.

[w0qj]

I'm also considering an Ultrabay HDD Cradle solution for my T42s...

But my question is this:

==>Can I make my Ultrabay HDD a FAT32 hard drive for data But my main T42 hard drive will still be NTFS)?



The reason being occasionally I may want other computers to access my data hard drive which has FAT32.

[GomJabbar]

Yes, you can do that. I believe you can do it from Disk Management mentioned above. You can also do it from the command prompt.

Format
Formats the disk in the specified volume to accept Windows files.

Syntax
format volume [/fs:file-system] [/v:label] [/q] [/a:UnitSize] [/c] [/x]

format volume [/v:label] [/q] [/f:size]

format volume [/v:label] [/q] [/t:tracks /n:sectors]

format volume [/v:label] [/q]

format volume [/q]

Parameters
volume
Specifies the mount point, volume name, or drive letter of the drive you want to format. If you do not specify any of the following command-line options, format uses the volume type to determine the default format for the disk.
/fs:file-system
Specifies the file system to use FAT, FAT32, or NTFS. Floppy disks can use only the FAT file system.

[davidspalding]

... Can I make my Ultrabay HDD a FAT32 hard drive for data But my main T42 hard drive will still be NTFS)?

The reason being occasionally I may want other computers to access my data hard drive which has FAT32.

As Gom said, sure. But why? NTFS is probably a bit more efficient, space-efficient and fault tolerant. I would only use FAT32 if I wanted to access the data in a Windows 98/ME box. But it won't make much difference if the other systems are accessing via network share.

[christopher_wolf]

Another reason one might want to stick with FAT32 is that it is far more reliable when you are reading/writing to it from Linux as opposed to R/W I/Os from Linux to and from an NTFS partition.

[w0qj]

...would only use FAT32 if I wanted to access the data in a Windows 98/ME box...

Exactly.
Many thanks for everyone's advice!

It's the actual hands-on experience that users are willing to share that make this forum such a great place!!

Tks again!

[davidspalding]

I found another reason to do FAT32. In the odd circumstance that a drive might be connected via USB to a NAS (networked attached storage) drive, like the SimpleTech unit I bought this week, the NAS will only read and write to a FAT32 drive. NTFS, it could access only read-only. If I put a 9mm notebook drive in a usb enclosure, I could connect it to the NAS, and it'd be mounted as a network share. Very handy.

Of course, there's an option for teh NAS to "claim" a USB drive, and take it over, formatting and all. => Ability to expand the 400 GB (a Seagate Momentus 7200.1, actually) to ... whatever.