External Hard Drive: NTFS Or FAT?

_Jimlad_ · 19 Jan 2011 at 21:34

always had it set to NTFS, however just went to plug it into the new ps3 to copy movies and then i find out ps3 needs it to be fat32, i have spares lying around somewhere so could use that, just wondered what peoples views were on say a usb powered portable 500gig hard drive...... NTFS or Fat32?

Rizo-UK · 19 Jan 2011 at 21:35

fat32 if the max filesize in less then 4gb.

also generaly more compatable

_Jimlad_ · 19 Jan 2011 at 21:36

i dont think i have any files larger than 4gb, but if i did it would error if i tried to copy?

Rizo-UK · 19 Jan 2011 at 21:41

Link to MS

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006

Philtor · 20 Jan 2011 at 09:23

I have my external HDD formatted as NTFS but im just wondering.... Would it be be possible to partition the HDD and format one partition as NTFS and the other as FAT32? I've never tried this myself but seems like a good idea under the circumstances.

Prophet · 20 Jan 2011 at 09:31

You could format it using EXFAT which allows larger than 4GB files without going to NTFS.

_Jimlad_ · 20 Jan 2011 at 10:55

Orange Peel said:
You could format it using EXFAT which allows larger than 4GB files without going to NTFS.

forgive me im on my mobile, is there an option to format to exfat in winxp or win7?

Tazzfalcon · 3 Jan 2012 at 13:04

Does anyone have an answer for this Q....

philtorrens said:
I have my external HDD formatted as NTFS but im just wondering.... Would it be be possible to partition the HDD and format one partition as NTFS and the other as FAT32? I've never tried this myself but seems like a good idea under the circumstances.

??? Anyone ???

To save me starting a new thread...

durbs · 3 Jan 2012 at 14:26

philtorrens said:
I have my external HDD formatted as NTFS but im just wondering.... Would it be be possible to partition the HDD and format one partition as NTFS and the other as FAT32? I've never tried this myself but seems like a good idea under the circumstances.

Yeah, course you can. I do this one one of my 1TB external drives, NTFS on 500GB and the other half formatted for the Mac.

Just shows up as 2 drives when you plug it in, I labelled 'em WinPart and MacPart to allow easy identification.

bledd · 3 Jan 2012 at 14:34

I think the PS3 only has trouble reading fat32 on the internal drive, if it's plugged in externally, it should be able to read it fine.

(Someone on here told me that because I originally thought it was fat32 only for the PS3)

I'd stick with NTFS

harryohh · 3 Jan 2012 at 15:01

bledd. said:
I think the PS3 only has trouble reading fat32 on the internal drive, if it's plugged in externally, it should be able to read it fine.

(Someone on here told me that because I originally thought it was fat32 only for the PS3)

I'd stick with NTFS

Well if he wants to use it for his PS3 he can't stick with NTFS.

bledd · 3 Jan 2012 at 15:09

^He may have made the same assumption that I did, my post says that it should work fine as the external drive

Tazzfalcon · 3 Jan 2012 at 15:38

durbs said:
Yeah, course you can. I do this one one of my 1TB external drives, NTFS on 500GB and the other half formatted for the Mac.

Just shows up as 2 drives when you plug it in, I labelled 'em WinPart and MacPart to allow easy identification.

Can you add a new partition without formatting the whole drive? I don't want to lose what I've already got on there...

Dan2kx · 3 Jan 2012 at 15:59

I believe in windows 7 you can resize partitions from the drive manager

Tazzfalcon · 3 Jan 2012 at 22:10

Dan2kx said:
I believe in windows 7 you can resize partitions from the drive manager

Hmm I've found the option to do this on google but when I got to 'shrink partition' in the disk manager the option is greyed out? :confused:

Dan2kx · 3 Jan 2012 at 23:48

Try option 2?

Essexraptor · 3 Jan 2012 at 23:57

OR

just use a GParted Live CD

it's simple

harryohh · 4 Jan 2012 at 10:16

bledd. said:
^He may have made the same assumption that I did, my post says that it should work fine as the external drive

NTFS is a microsoft file system. It will not work internally or externally with a PS3.

The PS3 has a proprietary internal HDD file system and supports FAT32 external drives and Flash drives.

EvilFranky · 4 Jan 2012 at 10:30

I have my external drives formatted with 2 partitions. The 1st is an active FAT32 @ about 32GB then the rest as NTFS. It's handy to keep a FAT32 partition just for massive compatibility it provides plus the ability to install OS's from it

EvilFranky · 4 Jan 2012 at 10:31

harryohh said:
NTFS is a microsoft file system. It will not work internally or externally with a PS3.

The PS3 has a proprietary internal HDD file system and supports FAT32 external drives and Flash drives.

Pretty sure the PS3 just uses a Unix filesystem, the issue is that it's encrypted so impossible to read on another system.