I know this queestion has been answered a million times on this forum (mainly because I was reading the answers about a month ago). Unfortunately, now that I need the answers I can't find them. If someone would be willing to point me to the relevant documentation I would be forever grateful...

I have my windows and linux partitions set up but would like some space that they can share (for media files, db files and the like). For some reason, I cannot create a valid FAT32 partition.

Current partitions:
hda1 10G HPFS/NTFS
hda2 9G Linux
hda3 1G Linux swap
hda4 100G Extended
hda5 20G Linux

Wanted Partitions:
hda6 20G FAT32
hda7 20G FAT32
hda8 20G FAT32
hda9 20G FAT32

I had these last few partitions created, but created them with linux fdisk. I remeber reading somewhere that after linux has created the partition, windows cannot read it. The fix described was to write 0 to the first 256 bytes:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda6 bs=256 count=1

This did not fix it (I also tried bumping the count to 100 just in case I was using more space for some freakish reason). When I opened windows and attempted to format I got an error message, which I wrote down and then filed in the garbage (sorry...something about it being invalid or full).

Help or redirects to documentation would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone sees any posts that I have left unattended, please point them out to me, I remember making some posts and am not sure if I just abandoned them (death in the family distracted me for a couple weeks but I think I got them all).

If it helps, I am running Win2000 and Slackware 8.1 (is that same as 9?).

I take it you did run mkfs after you created the partitions?

Of course not. That would have made sense.

Actually, I didn't even consider mkfs. I was under the impression that it only did linux files systems so didn't even consider it. I read the man pages last night, suffered a system lock (grrr....not sure what is causing that), and went to bed. I will try it tonight.

mkfs -t dos -n Media -F 32 -I /dev/hda6

Can anyone see anything wrong with this? If not I will run it when I get home from work.

You should use mkfs.vfat not dos.

Thanks. I kinda thought that but the man pages I was looking at for man.vfat had man.dos in their usage.

So you say it should look like this:

mkfs -t vfat -n Media -F 32 /dev/hda6

or

mkfs.vfat -nMedia -F 32 /dev/hda6

I do not have mkfs.vfat. I do have mkfs.msdos and mkdosfs. Both returned the same error message:

Attempting to create a too large filesystem

I used the same parameters for both:

mkdosfs -c -v -n media /dev/hda6

The max FAT filesystem is 2gb.

The easy answer since you don't have mkfs.vfat is to format the FAT32 partitions from W2K.

And since that is where all of these problems started.... I don't get any larger partitions.

I did try it with a 2G partition after submitting my last reply. With the reboot I didn't quite get back.

It looks like I have to resign myself to 2G partitions under windows. That should be interesting since I have 100G of space to partition. hmmm....

100G / 2GperP = 50Partitions.

Looks like I may have a problem.

Well... thanks for everybodies help. I'm better off than when I started. If anyone has any other ideas let me know.

As a side note, I was looking at mkfs.vfat online and it is listed as a link to mkdosfs. Don't know if that holds true for all systems (I think that was a Debian system) but it's there none the less.

W2K should be able to create a fat32 partition and format any partition size you desire. But since you created the partitions with linux you probably just used the wrong ID. Make sure that it is c which is FAT32 lba.

All you need to do is change the filesystem type and reformat the partition. I can verify this when I get home from work.

That was what I thought the original problem was.

Before writing to the forum, I had originally created the partitions with Linux and attempted to format them with Windows. When that failed, I deleted all of the FAT32 partitions and used ms fdisk to try to create the virtual partitions.

It would only allow me to create an 8M partition at the end of the drive.

Rereading your post, I notice that you said to set it to type 'c'. I had it set to type 'b'. I will also attempt to verify this when I get home. I will recreate the partition as type c and attempt to format under windows.

What is the difference between FAT32 and FAT32 lba? I have a feeling that I know and am going to kick myself if I am right.

MS info.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;126855I

Actually, I don't know if FAT32 max size is 8gb but it could be. FAT32 lba max size I thought was 137gb but also read that its 2 terabytes.

8G is better than 2G. I will experiment with sizes. Will also try the FAT32 lba. My drive is a lot smaller than 137G so it doesn't really matter.

I would like 10G but 8 is close enough, if it comes right down to it.

BTW: the link didn't work for me.

Still don't have a good understanding of the difference between b and c filetypes. The 137gb limit is the BIOS int13 and FAT32 itself is 2TB. Without int13 support the fileystem is limited to 8.4GB.

Here is another link
http://averstak.tripod.com/fatdox/bootsec.htm

Just to let everybody know (and sorry it took so long), I now have a whole bunch of 20G FAT32 partitions on my harddrive (just like I wanted).

The problem was that I did not have the type set to 'c' on the partition. Set the flag to 'c' and the whole thing formatted quit nicely.

Thanks for all the help.