why can't i format with fat32?

  • Thread starter Thread starter frist44
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frist44

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I just put together my new computer. Everything is cool

My hard drives are:

Maxtor 30 gig in to 2 partitions. The OS was formatted with fat 32 and once i loaded the operating system i was able to format the other half of it into fat.

I also have a WD 80 gig that i want to format with fat because of old files i'm going to bring onto it but the fat option isn't there. It will only let me do ntfs. What's going on?

Brandon
 
This is what Microsoft says:

You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create one using the Format tool. This behavior is by design. If you need to create a volume larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system instead

You may be using a different Windows version than 2000 but this will most likely still apply.
 
christiaan said:

You may be using a different Windows version than 2000 but this will most likely still apply.
Click to expand...

XP works in the same way.
 
You can copy from FAT32 partitions to NTFS partitions using 2K or XP without any problem. Just format with NTFS...it's the better file system anyhow.

Slackmaster 2000
 
If for some reason you want to keep the partition FAT32, you can simply get a Win98 or WinME startup or boot disk, boot the machine with that, and then format. Once it's formated it will work fine. If you are paranoid, you might want to disconnect your system drive while you do this so you don't accidently format it.

The best reason I know to use FAT32 is if you multi-boot different OSs, or if you anticipate needing to move the data drive to another PC that can't read NTFS

I generally agree with Slack that NTFS is a better choice for big drives. It doesn't perform any better, or any worse, but it is less likely to become corrupted.

However I am using an XP Pro machine right now with a single 120 gig FAT32 system disk and not having any problems. The reason for my setup is that I used to have a 60 gig FAT32 drive, which I Ghosted to a new 120 gig drive, and I have never bothered to convert the file system.
 
I just went with slack's advice and formatted with ntfs. Havne't looked back yet. I recorded all day and played files from my old fat system with great success. thanks for the help.

Brandon
 
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