So I was just setting up a new XP install on a large, 60 GB+ FAT32 partition. (Yes, I know NTFS has many advantages, but I have yet to lose a drive through catastrophic FAT32 failure, and for my limited purposes file permissions cause more problems than they solve.) My strategy was to boot up with Knoppix, run GParted, and create the formatted partition.

Thing is, although XP setup would have no problem recognizing and installing to this partition, it just wouldn't boot. The BIOS would come up with an "invalid disk" message.

Eventually I wound up digging out an old Win98 install CD, creating a 4 GB partition with fdisk, digging out another ancient Win98 boot floppy (!) to format the partition, installing XP, and then growing the partition with GParted.

I know Windows XP outright refuses to create FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB, but is there some kind of restriction on the size of a FAT32 partition it can be installed to?