No option to format hard drive to fat32?

manbearpig · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:04

Hi,

I have a spare hard drive that i want to use with a ps3, I want to stream movies and music from the hard drive to the ps3. I have done this before with a different hard drive and an xbox 360 and it worked fine. When i try and format the hard drive to fat32 there is no option, the only option is NTFS which is what it is already using.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks

rpstewart · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:18

Windows will only let you format volumes less than 32Gb in size as FAT32 despite 2Tb volumes being supported. You'll need to use a third party tool to do it.

PatZ1989 · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:27

32gb is the size limit for fat32

manbearpig · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:48

Ok thanks. So do i need to make a partition that is 32gb or under?
i dont know how i have used a 500gb hard drive as fat32 before then..

BlackAle · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:49

PatZ1989 said:
32gb is the size limit for fat32

From the FAT32 wiki...

Cluster values are represented by 32-bit numbers, of which 28 bits are used to hold the cluster number, for a maximum of approximately 268 million (228) clusters. This allows for drive sizes of up to 8 terabytes with 32KB clusters, but the boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting volume size to 2 TB on a hard disk with 512 byte sectors.

james.miller · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:51

http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

boom! job done. it'll format all the space available as a fat32 partition.

PatZ1989 · 11 Mar 2010 at 16:55

While that will do it, bear in mind there is a good reason that it is limited at 32gb. Most likely because you will notice a dire peformance out of anything higher then that

james.miller · 11 Mar 2010 at 17:23

they did it because it's inefficient as a file system on large drives, not really because of performance.

besides, it's for a storage drive - performance isnt really a concern. plenty of people have done it without any problems.

http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT32.htm

This "cannot Format more than 32GB" behavior is by design, as Microsoft recommends using the NTFS file system for partitions greater than 32GB. One reason for this is: as a FAT32 partition goes beyond 32GB, the cluster size that is used jumps from 16K to 32K, thus "wasting" far more drive space when small files are stored. (See the FAT16 page for more about Cluster Size and Wasted Space.)

he's putting music and movies on the drive - it wont be an issue.

manbearpig · 11 Mar 2010 at 17:46

james.miller said:
http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

boom! job done. it'll format all the space available as a fat32 partition.

Thanks, that has worked great!

Im from Dunstable as well by the way! :cool:

james.miller · 11 Mar 2010 at 19:25

oh hai!