FAT32 Formatting Failure for USB backup drive

[mjcurry]

Hello all. I've got a Maxtor Central Axis 2TB NAS, shared by a very generous friend. I've been trying to backup the NAS files, or some of them, to a Maxtor one touch 250 gb drive that I've had for awhile (plugged into the NAS via USB).
First time I plugged in the One Touch, I got the message from the Central Axis web interface that I needed to re-format the drive in order to use it as a backup drive.
I let the web interface do its thing and reformat the drive. I set up the backup schedule, and figured all was well. But when I checked to see if a backup was completed, it had not. When I went to the Central Axis web interface, I get the message that "The drive is not formatted correctly. Do you want to format it now?" If I say yes, after about 2 or 3 minutes, I get the message "formatting failed, please try again".
So I disconnect the drive from the NAS, connect to a PC running XP, and using the Computer Management interface, delete the partition on the USB Maxtor One touch, then create a new partition (without re-formatting the drive as I was only given the option of formatting to NTFS, and I believe the NAS is looking for FAT32). I plug the One Touch back into the NAS, go to the 'format usb' drives page and follow the directions to re-format the USB drive. Voila! It finishes and says I've been successful!

Now I go back to the backup page of the web interface and try to backup, and get the message "Your backup drive is not formatted correctly. Do you want to format it now?" I say huh? but go ahead and try, and after 3 minutes or so get the message that "formatting failed, please try again".

The "support" link of the web interface takes me to a dead link. I'm getting a bit frustrated. Do any of you have any insights or suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[thiggins]

Don't worry about not finding the Maxtor help. The "help" available on the website isn't much use, nor are the forums.

Windows only provides the NTFS format option because it can't format FAT32 for drives over 32 GB.

Attach the drive to your Windows machine again and just delete the partition and don't create a new one. Then try the Central Axis Format, which I think uses EXT3.

The advantages of EXT3 are that the backup will probably be faster and you will be able to back up files larger than 2 GB. You can use this to provide EXT2/3 read/write in Windows.

The advantage of FAT32 is that you can move the drive back to any Windows system to read the backup drive if you ever need to. But you can't copy files over 2 GB.

If that doesn't work, you can try this or this utility to format the USB drive in FAT32. But, again, you won't be able to copy files over 2 GB.

 

[mjcurry]

That's got it! Thanks!

Thanks Tim! I followed your advice, and reconnected to the Windows machine, and deleted the partition. I then plugged back in to the Central Axis. Here's the interesting little wrinkle though. If I go to the "format" page of the web interface (for the plugged in USB drive), the only suggested format is FAT32, as in "this drive will be formatted in FAT32, all files will be lost".
I did that the first time around (went ahead and let the NAS format the drive) but when I went to use the drive for a backup drive, again through the web interface, I got the message that the drive needed to be formatted, without adding that it would be formatted FAT32.
So this time, I went straight to the backup web interface after deleting the partition as you suggested, got the message that the drive needed to be formatted (without saying it would be FAT32) and said go ahead and format the drive. It formatted successfully, and as I'm writing this, the backup is underway!

So thank you Papa Higgins! You saved the day!

 

[thiggins]

Yippee! And thanks for writing up the "wrinkle". Hope it helps someone else.

Happy backup!