external Hard Drive problem

[Joe923s]

Ok, so i recently purchased a USB2 external harddrive, 120gb... I have been using it at school to backup my hard drive.. My computer is currently out of commision so i connected it to my old computer at home. Thers a slight problem tho. I had partitioned and formatted it using WinXP and the only computers ive used it on so far were XP. Now i have it connected to a Win98 computer and it says that the drive is not formatted. Is there anyway that i can get this drive to work with win98?? im getting so frusterated with this piece, if i had the money i would buy more ram and install XP, but right now thats not an option... any suggestions?? or is it hopeless?

 

[mikesgroovin]

How did you format the drive with XP? If you formatted the drive using a NTFS file system then the drive may not be readable with Win9x. You will have to use a FAT32 file system with the USB drive.

-Mike

 

[RoyalW]

Yip.
Win98 will not read NTFS however WinXP can read both formats.
So it be best to have your USB 120GB HDD in FAT32.

 

[Joe923s]

and how do i do this without messing up the information on the drive?

 

[Joe923s]

and therefor lose my information.... great, ahhhh nothing is going my way these days...

 

[Joe923s]

the only problem is now i have to find someone not only with XP but with over 100GB of harddrive space and is willing to back up my data, not likely...

 

[RoyalW]

You wont lose your data if you get Partition Magic to convert it

 

[ekÆsine]

backup your data anyways, i've had partition magic corrupt partitions many times.

 

[Joe923s]

so then what is the general consensus with partition magic? It may not be worth taking the chance when i might have my laptop back in a couple weeks...

 

[CrashAbbott]

Wait for the laptop,,,

I have had Partition Magic,,, magically F#@k up my HDD on a number of different machines and occassions for use,,,

I dont trust it,, it has a high failure rate in my books,,

Thats my two bits,,

cheers,