Well,.. After spending almost an hour to format my laptop drive under Windows 2000 to see if I could prove that it has bad sectors,… the format got to 99% then I got the error “Volume Size is Too Big”.

Just freaking awesome.
http://support.wdc.com/tips/index.asp?tip=63

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=%2Fservicedesks%2Fwebcasts%2Fen%2Fwc041901%2Fwct041901.asp

Apparently, Win2k will allow you to -create- a partition that’s bigger than 32GB, but you can’t format it using Win2k. It -can- however read it, if you use something else to format it. Apparently, this is by design.

Forgive me for venting, but this is terrible design. You should get a message to this effect -before- you give Microsoft an hour of your life that you won’t get back.

As I sit here typing this, I am formatting the very same drive as NTFS. If I’d known this before, it would be NTFS by now.