Re: Too large filesystem?

From: David Efflandt (efflandt_at_xnet.com)
Date: 07/27/04 

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:46:14 +0000 (UTC)

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004, Oliver Cromwell <cromwell.nospam@arcor.de> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I have tried to create a FAT32 filesystem on an external harddrive, that is
> connected via an USB-cable (/dev/ sda1) First I created a primary partition
> with fdisk, giving it the type b (FAT32). Reason for this is, I would like
> to access this from Windows XP and Linux and be able to write on it as
> well.
>
> When giving the command mkfs.vfat or mkfs.msdos, it tells me that the
> filesystem is too large (it would have been 45GB).
>
> Does anybody know, it it doesn't want to create this FS and how can I do it?
> Thanks for all your help!

See http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/38803/38803.html (about
Windows limiting FAT32 partitions to 32MB)

But I think there is another matter too. FAT32 partitions over a certain
size (1024 cyl?) may need to use type 'c' for LBA instead of type 'b'.
But I forget the exact details because I no longer have any FAT32
partitions that fall into the 'c' type. Large extended partitions may
also need to use a different LBA type than smaller extended partitions
(Linux doesn't care).

So if you want partitions to be compatible with Windows, it may be best to
create Windows partitions with Windows FDISK (unless they are small, or
you are sure you know what you are doing). 

-- 
David Efflandt - All spam ignored  http://www.de-srv.com/

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