Hi Everyone
I recently bought a Western Digital 80 Gb external usb drive for my laptop.
It is formatted in FAT32.

After connecting the USB Hard Drive to my USB Port.
I right clicked on "My computer "
Then i clicked on "Manage".

Then a new window opened and i see
Computer Management (Local)

Under this there are three Links

System Tools
Storage
Service and Applications

On clicking the "Storage"
I see
Removable Storage
Disk Defragmenter
Disk Management

I clciked on the "Disk Management".
On the right side i saw two disks
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------
Volume | Layout | Type | File System | Status | Capacity | Free Space |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------

C: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy (System)
F: Partition Basic FAT32 Healthy

I right clicked on the F Drive and clicked on the "Mark partition as active"
Then the status of the F Drive changes as follows
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------
Volume | Layout | Type | File System | Status | Capacity | Free Space |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
C: Partition Basic NTFS Healthy (System)
F: Partition Basic FAT32 Healthy (Active)

I did so as i thought before using i am supposed to make it active.
But later on i read some articles and got to know there was no need of
setting it as active.
Now i am not going to install any operating system on this drive.

1. CAN ANYONE PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO MAKE IT BACK TO ITS ORIGINAL STATE ?

2. DID I DO ANYTHING WRONG WHEN I SET IT TO ACTIVE ?

3. IS IT GOING TO EFFECT MY HARD DRIVE USAGE IN ANY WAY ?

Now i have converted it to NTFS using Partition Magic with 4K clusters.
I wanted to Split the partitions but The option in the Partition Magic 8.0
shows the
"Split Partition as dimmed " for my Drive F ?

1. IS IT BECAUSE I MADE THE DRIVE F AS ACTIVE ?

2. CAN I NOT PARTITION MY HARD DISK NOW ?

PLEASE REPLY TO ALL MY QUSTIONS.

Thanks.

GB

If it gets used in xp,or if you want to use it,make it active.Once activated or use by x
you can still change it,reformat the drive,and partition it any way you like.Use you 3r
party stuff,or boot to xp cd,repair,typeiskPart /
All options for reconfigureing the drive show,to enter repair,press the enter key for password
you can also go to run,type:cmd typeiskPart Type:delete disk E
E: being the hd