Creating a fat32 partition??

2628 Views 6 Replies 6 Participants Last post by mikeny, Jan 3, 2006

slimsergi

Discussion Starter · Dec 30, 2005

I was trying to follow the How-to guide to upgrade my Tivo with a second drive. I have set everything up correctly (3 hard drives in hda-hdc spots). However, when I try to mount my hda drive (the one that contains windows on it), it says that it cannot mount ntfs Kernnel or something like that.

Looking back through the guide, I believe that I need to have a fat32 partition on this drive for it to work. Does anyone know how to do this? I see that I can download partition magic, but I am not sure if it will work for what I am trying to do. I tried to install win2k on the drive, but it does not have to option to format with fat32, only ntfs. Any suggestions or am I going about this all wrong?

Thanks,
Slim

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thezoo

· #2 · Dec 30, 2005

slimsergi said:
I was trying to follow the How-to guide to upgrade my Tivo with a second drive. I have set everything up correctly (3 hard drives in hda-hdc spots). However, when I try to mount my hda drive (the one that contains windows on it), it says that it cannot mount ntfs Kernnel or something like that.

Looking back through the guide, I believe that I need to have a fat32 partition on this drive for it to work. Does anyone know how to do this? I see that I can download partition magic, but I am not sure if it will work for what I am trying to do. I tried to install win2k on the drive, but it does not have to option to format with fat32, only ntfs. Any suggestions or am I going about this all wrong?

Thanks,
Slim

yeah you can't convert back to FAT32. you can only convert from FAT to NTFS.. the only way I know of getting back to a FAT32 file system is to format the drive. Make a dos boot floppy and make sure it has fdisk and the format prog on it and see if you can just fdisk it and start over with FAT32 using the dos format prog. I don't think partition magic will do what you want to do.. it just splits up the partitions and keeps from losing your data. its been a while since I used partition magic so Im not sure if it will do what you want or not. I do know with XP you can boot off the CDROM with the windows XP OS install CD and fdisk the drive and reformat it in FAT32. it will try to install XP but Im sure you can just cancel out of it before it trys to install the XP OS. not sure about win2k tho.

--Bill

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funtoupgrade

· #3 · Dec 30, 2005

Partition Magic will do what you want it to do. Just resize the first partition to leave 5MB or so of blank space at the front. Then make the unused space into a FAT32 primary partition. Do your Tivo stuff and then decide whether or not to delete the FAT32 partition and then add the space back to the first partition. If you don't use Partition Magic you will most likely lose some data on your hard drive unless there is unpartitioned space already on the drive.

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Proudleftie

· #4 · Dec 31, 2005

I have xp and encountered the same problem, but I avoided the fat32 issue by simply doing a direct copy from old drive to new drive. This means not having a backup file, but if you're replacing an old drive wih a new one, your old drive is your backup anyway.

The good news is that going the direct copy route, I was able to copy everything, shows and all onto the new drive in about an hour.

The instructions I went by are located in TiVo Community > Underground Playground > TiVo Upgrade Center > Swap hard drive the short instructions

I went from a 40 hour drive to a 280 hour drive, and it took less than two hours from unplugging to replugging the tivo. It was my first time upgrading, but I am very familiar with pc guts.

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mikeny

· #5 · Dec 31, 2005

I am thinking about backing up my dual 250 GB HR10-250.

I also have XP without a FAT32 partition. However, I have another (Maxtor) hard drive connected as a slave (Drive G), for additional storage (not bootable, but all NTFS).

I believe I can make a FAT32 partition using Maxblast on that G drive for the backup. I guess I need to disconnect my main C bootable drive.

Is it true that I would need to connect both TiVo A&B drives on the Secondary Cable or do they just need to be on the same cable?

For some reason Dell has configured my system as Primary Master: CD-Rom/DVD Rom (Drive D), Primary Slave: CD-RW/DVD-RW (Drive E), Secondary Master: Hard Drive C: (XP: NTFS) and I added Secondary Slave: (non bootable-NTFS currently)(Drive G).

Do I need to switch all the cables? I was prepared, as I said to disconnect the master C drive and at least one optical drive in order to backup the two but do the IDE locations really matter?

One more question: Should any of these drives go in the future, what are the ramifications of not having a backup?

Would I definitely need a new unit or is it just that I would lose all Season passes, channels lists, and recordings?

What insurance would I be gaining with the backup?

Any help would be appreciated.

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BobCamp1

· #6 · Jan 3, 2006

THe trick is to format your new drive as a FAT32. You only need to create and format a 3 GB partition.
Make the backup onto it.
Disconnect the old Tivo drive, boot XP, and copy the image backup onto your XP drive.
Disconnect XP, reconnect old Tivo drive, and do backup straight from old drive to new drive.

If you can't make the backup, don't worry. You just lose all your settings and season passes if the drive(s) dies. You can always buy an Instantcake image for your Tivo for $20. Note that your Tivo needs the image to boot.

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mikeny

· #7 · Jan 3, 2006

Thank you Bob. I'll think about whether it's more prudent or more risky to bother with the all the drive and cable swapping when InstantCake is there as an option if necessary.

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