P2 Partitions on the laptop - what the?!

[Erik Olson]

When I connect the P2 Store to my Toshiba laptop, a series of drives (H-V) show up in Windows Explorer under a removable drive heading (G).

Now, my external USB 2.0 drives are FAT 32, but the Toshiba laptop hard drive (C) shows as NTFS - can't be changed. Is this right?

The external Seagate USB 2.0 drives show up in Control Panel > Adminstrative Tools > Computer Mgt. > Storage > Disk Mgt (Local) >

E: SGATE1201 FAT32
F: SGATE1601 FAT32

However, the (presumably P2Store) drives (H-V) show up simply as 3.71GB partitions with no description of FAT32 or NTFS - just "HEALTHY". I've done the HDD format procedure on the P2Store when it was not conncected to the laptop or camera.

Tomorrow, I'll be shooting the first footage for a new documentary and I'm just a little nervous about the P2 data swap to external USB 2.0 drives through this laptop.

Thanks for any clarification!

e

 

[MrPolarBare]

All of this sounds normal to me. I have a P2 Store as well. NTFS is a more advanced system than FAT32 is. If you are on Windows XP, most liekly your system drive is NTFS and not FAT32.

There is one way of knowing for sure.... Test it out! Thats what I did before my first critical shoot. Play around with it, and transfer some files to your computer via the P2 Store. Like I said, this all sounds normal to me (your current setup). So, I wouldn't worry about it.

One thing (you might already know this), but you should never format the P2 Store with your computer (like you would a normal external hard drive). You should only format the P2 Store by using the format option in the P2 Store Manager software, or by using the format button on the actual P2 Store drive itself.

 

[Erik Olson]

Yes, and it should be noted that right-click on any of the P2 subfolders / partitions in the Windows Explorer will give you the option to Format, but it cannot be executed as the disk will show as Write Protected.

e