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Calm down man jesus christ. I never read the whole thread.
NTFS to FAT32
- Thread starter kona786
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Calm down man jesus christ. I never read the whole thread.
Associate
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I read the first post, then the last post.
You sure? I've definintely formatted one of my 500gb seagate freeagent drives to FAT32 (for use with my NAS) using disk manager in windows. Maybe it doesn't work on some versions of windows/command lines tools.
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I'm perfectly calm, thanks, but for future reference perhaps it might be a good idea to actually read a thread before chipping in with advice, out of common courtesy to the other contributors?
Well, I'm pretty sure, yes, although I'll happily be corrected if I'm wrong. What version of Windows were you using? Can you repeat what you did?
You can only format a drive up to 500-600GB else it will fail, so you do need a 3rd party app. I used one the other day to format a new external 1TB drive.
I think its just a limit within Windows rather than FAT32 itself, as Apple and Linux OS's don't have the issue.
I think its just a limit within Windows rather than FAT32 itself, as Apple and Linux OS's don't have the issue.
The 32Gb limit is imposed by Microsoft within Windows and not a limitation of FAT32. An existing drive larger than 32Gb that is already FAT32 can be formatted as FAT32 again within Windows. Windows won't create a FAT32 drive larger than 32Gb but can use larger FAT32 partitions if they exist.
That is sort of stupid then, why would they limit windows like that?
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Most likely to save license fees, and the amount of the average audience who have a clue about open source file systems will be minimal.
The reason MS probably limited FAT32 to 32GB or under is to stop people who don't know any better formatting things like external HDDs to FAT32 for Windows use, when for most purposes NTFS will be the better option.
I can understand FAT on a portable USB stick to minimise write, or for certain specific uses/cross-OS compatibility/non-Windows boot drive, but for a normal HDD on a modern windows OS, internal or external, I'd go for NTFS over FAT32 these days any time. 4GB file limit just being one reason.
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In regards to the OP question, Minitool Partition Wizard can also do this I believe.
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While googling around, I fount this Verbatim Fat32 tool It' seems to have worked for quite a few people too.
Some great points.