Partition external drive

Hello folks,
I purchased a new 80G hardrive. My old one (10G, ooh aw!) was making weird noises on boot, thought it might be at brink of failure. Win98 on this machine. I used Acronis True Image 8 to make a drive copy on the new HD, no problem, the intention being to install it to replace the old one. But then I tried to partition the new HD (still loaded in the external USB enclosure) to no avail. Tried Acronis, tried Power Quest Partition Magic (2000), tried Power Quest Drive Image (2000) to make a backup partition, no go. All of them just gave me the option of making a partition of my little old 10G HD. For some reason, I couldn't get to the new drive to partition it, even though it showed up in Windows Explorer. Any help would be appreciated.
Chas

I just bought a USB Iomega drive for my XP laptop and I found that the drive was formatted as a FAT32. I had to use quick format to get it set as an NTFS.

If your drive is formatted as an NTFS then I don't think win98 can deal with it. Have you tried doing a format and then a partition for your drive. If this doesn't work maybe the Iomega drive like I got would work with your win98 system.



Mark

Hi Markgc,
Thanks for responding. That is certainly something I hadn't thought of, but I checked and the drive is indeed FAT32, with the Drive Copy on part of it, with the rest unallocated. I just tried again to make a backup partition and no go. My current 10G drive seems to be working noiselessly for the time being, but I would sure like to get the new one all set up before I install it. Do you have any other ideas? Thanks again,
Chas

Chas, do the backup programs see the drive?

How many primary partitions have you created on the drive? The maximum is 4 primary partitions for any drive; if you want more, you can create an Extended partition which can contain several Logical partitions.

Also, you can try the Gnome Partition Editor (gparted) - it's a tiny Linux bootable CD with graphic interface, which allows you to manage internal and external drives, copy partitions, resize them and so on. Give it a try, make sure the external drive is connected to the PC when you boot off the CD.

Hello puterfixer,
Partition Magic does not see the new drive. Drive Image and Acronis do, but they won't create a backup partition on it. I did not partition the drive before I made the Drive Copy on it using Acronis, so Acronis shows it as the ~10G Drive plus ~60 unallocated. I know nothing about Linux; would the bootable CD work with Windows? Thanks.
Chas

Chas, the bootable CD will start Linux from the CD instead of starting Windows from your hard drive. It gives you an intuitive graphic interface with buttons, menus and everything you're used with in Windows, hiding the different "technology" behind the scenes. Give it a try, although it's odd that those other utilities didn't allow you to create extra partitions.

GPartEd will allow you to resize the existing partition, too, or clone a partition from a hard drive to another. You can right-click and select Copy/Paste. Remember to select the USB drive from the drop-down selection list at the top right; the internal hard drive is probably called "/dev/hda1", and the USB drive will be "/dev/sda1".

Thank you puterfixer, I'll give it a try.
Chas