How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk has a fairly complete "official Mickey" description of setup for hard disks and is old enough to include WinME instructions. While repartitioning (fdisk) and reformatting should normally be a last resort, it does look like WinME is telling you there's no partition defined on your one drive. There is quite a bit of description of system and setup requirements at the link that may help you if you read carefully before you start actually doing stuff.

Others should note that the above instructions may not apply fully if you have an OS later than WinME.

I don't have a Win98 system up due to a graphics card blowout, so it's difficult to verify much about older systems.

A typo in the previous post:

NOTE: No Windows version, including WinXP, can do a NEW FORMAT in FAT32 of a partition larger than 32MB.

should have said 32GB of course.

Although that was stated in a couple of Mickey's KB articles, I'm finding some conflicts. WinXP can't format a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB by design, although it can read/write to one up to at least 2TB (and one source says up to 8TB). They assume that any partition larger than 32GB should be NTFS if you're running WinXP.

Early Win2K can't read/write to a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, and forces you to NTFS for anything larger. That may have been fixed with one of the later Service Releases; but I can't confirm it (yet). As for WinXP, the preferred format for Win2K is NTFS, except for very small partitions, although either should run okay off a FAT32 disk.

Early Win95, versions bought in a box, can't read/write FAT32, but some OEM versions could. If you're stuck with FAT (FAT16) the maximum partition sizes are pretty small. Win95 Service Pack 1 possibly includes FAT32 capability, but finding info on the old OSs is getting harder all the time.

Win98 should be able to access FAT32, and later versions appear to have been able to format FAT32 partitions as large as (and maybe larger than) they could read. WinME is really just a "super Win98" and should be able to access a FAT32 drive; and it should be able to format "large partitions," although I'm seeing conflicting info on just how large "large" means.

If you use the Windows methods/tools built into your OS, it shouldn't let you do anything that will not be compatible with your OS. (Or at least it should warn you if you try to.)

John