external usb drive

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Reformat the drive as Fat32 (if it even supports drives that large)? You'll probably also need to create a mountlist with the particular specs of your drive; that's what I had to do on mine to recognize a Fat-formatted SD card. Good luck!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Regular FAT is going to have a lot of limitations... Did you try formatting it on a regular PC as FAT32?  It should work. Also the version of FAT95 that comes with Poseidon is old. There's a newer one on Aminet.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

For clarity sake, the reason you're trying to format it as FAT32 is because you intend to use it to transfer files between PC and Amiga, correct?

If you're using it on your Amiga only you can use any one of the more advanced file systems, like PFS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_File_System

(max volume size says 137GB with that, BTW)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

pfs ok i have heard of it...if i install it does it change my main drive ? ..do i need a serial no or is it free ? ..just wanna format the drive fully..not change my whole system..

You can format one drive as PFS, or all your drives, it won't change your main drive unless you tell it to.  You may want to leave your main drive alone and just format the external drive with PFS until you're more familiar with it.  It's free, search for the 5.3 installer on Aminet and the latest AIO-handler, then search for a thread on this forum with a comment by user @Paul1981 that actually explains how to install it (the docs are useless, LOL).

As for FAT95... you only need that if you intend to swap the drive onto a PC to transfer files.  For example I have an SD card in my system formatted as FAT32 that i use with FAT95.  If I want to copy files onto my PC I just put them on the card and plug it in to my PC.  Conversely if I want to copy files onto my Amiga I dump them onto the SD card and plug it into that.  If you have no need for this capability then you have no need of FAT95.