Solved Should I use Samsung format utility?

[o770]

Hello there. There is no documentation I could find of Samsung Format Utility with the technical aspects of what it does - a how-to is all there is. Should it format the disk differently? Should any advantage exist over Windows 7 disk manager for NTFS?

I understand those might be questions to ask Samsung directly but any help is much appreciated.
Drive is USB external of 1TB.
Thanks!

 

[mjf]

I have no direct experience with Samsung externals but I assume you have the following information
SAMSUNG Hard Disk Drive
Assuming you are dealing with an ordinary plain disk and not relying on special manufacturer backup software I cannot see anything special for NTFS file systems.
BUT
For a FAT32 file system you can have a partition size up to ~2TB. Windows will recognize this partition but isn't prepared to make one greater than 32GB (Why I don't know). The Samsung utility has this ability as do some other formatting utilities.


Edit: Another opinion. If you are using Windows then I think you need a specific reason to have large FAT32 partitions rather than NTFS.

 

[karlsnooks]

Hello there. There is no documentation I could find of Samsung Format Utility with the technical aspects of what it does - a how-to is all there is. Should it format the disk differently? Should any advantage exist over Windows 7 disk manager for NTFS?

I understand those might be questions to ask Samsung directly but any help is much appreciated.
Drive is USB external of 1TB.
Thanks!

None at all.

I'd attach the drive and then use Diskpart put create two primary partitions of 500 GB but the partition size if personal choice.
PREPARE A DISK OR A USB FLASH DRIVE FOR USE



Run CMD.EXE as an Administrator

Enter following commands, each followed by hitting ENTER:
· DiskPart
· List disk (lists disks in your system)
· Select disk <numeral> (without the < and the >)
· Detail disk (info should let you know if you selected correctly)
· Clean ALL (your entire disk is being overwritten with zeros.
This can take a considerable amount of time. Leave off the ALL for a much shorter clean which only cleans the boot sectors)
· CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY (create a primary partition)
· FORMAT FS=NTFS (format the partition)
· ACTIVE (the partition can contain operating system startup files)
· ASSIGN (the next available letter is assigned to disk)
or
ASSIGN Letter=X (Assign X as drive letter. Use the letter of your choice)
· EXIT (only type after Clean is finished. Exits from DiskPart)
· EXIT (this exits from the command shell)

 

[o770]

That was very good help. Thanks a lot!

 

[mjf]

You're welcome I hope post#2 fully answered your question.
If you need a large FAT32 (>32GB) partition use the Samsung utility.