I have a 30gb hard disk. SInce I have bought a 80gb hard disk I installed windows XP on new hard disk (15gb) and installed linux on the rest 65gb. Everthing is fine with my new hard disk.
But when I want to format my old hard disk to fat32 so I installed Partition magic and tried to format it but there appeared an error and I couldn't format it.
So I used
/sbin/vfat.mkfs /dev/hdb5 (it was an ext3 normal partition)
/sbin/vfat.mkfs /dev/hdb6 (it was an ext3 normal partition)
/sbin/vfat.mkfs /dev/hdb7 (it was an ext3 normal partition)
/sbin/vfat.mkfs /dev/hdb8 (it was an ext3 root parition)
/sbin/vfat.mkfs /dev/hdb3 (swap)
/sbin/vfat.mkfs /dev/hdb1 (home partition)

then I tried to boot my computer from windows, then I saw only 3 partition added to my partition lists. I can read and write from these partition very well. But despite good things which I have heard about partition magic it doesn't show anything about my old hard disk and shows only "bad disk" about it. But it can shows my ext3 partitions on my new hard disk. That's why I think it is impossible to format my old disk so that I can use all of its space using partition magic on windows.

I don't know exactly how I can format hdb1,hdb3,hdb8 on linux so that I can use their space on windows. Morover It will be better for me if I combine all of these partitions to a unique one.

I would be glad if you help me

sorry I used /sbin/mkfs.vfat instead of all vfat.mkfs which I have written in the thread above

no need to use partition magic. run windows, right click on "my computer" go to "manage", then look for drives. you will find a lay out of all drives attacked to the system that windows sees.

at that point, if you know what the drive is, you can right click and format it as fat32 and you are golden.

i tried to format it so but there appeared some error. I made some changes and at the end I am not able to see my second hard drive in manager.
I don't think that windows can help me.
What I need is very simple but as a Linux Newbie for more than 8 months I don't know how to format a hard disk to a unique vfat partition.

I'd be inclined to start with a clean slate, and zero-write the drive. Samsung's ClearHDD will do the job nicely (it'll work for any make of drive, BTW):

http://www.samsung.com/Products/Hard...s/clearhdd.htm

Once the process is complete, you should be able to partition and format the drive any way you choose.

I don't see my second hard disk on windows anymore nad it takes a while my windows to boot.
this is the following error which i receive
clearhdd 1

Error, source drive not ready

could just be a bad drive.

Yes, it's beginning to sound like a drive failure - can you see it in the bios?

i can format it in linux using fdisk, and even can mount partitions but I am not able to see them in windows anymore