Re: How to format FAT32 in Windows XP?

M.I.5¾ wrote:

"Anthony W" <technojock@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gwJxj.13402$o23.8015@xxxxxxxxxxx

Bill in Co. wrote:


A DOS boot disk, e.g., a Win9x/Me "Startup Disk", will "see" NTFS partitions
very well. At least for the most part. The *only* NTFS partitions it will
not recognize are those logical drives created in an extended partition.
Anna

Not on my system it doesn't.
Not unless I have NTFSDOS (or whatever) loaded. We must have different systems. :-)

Besides which, AFAIK, it is impossible for DOS-based enviroment to see NTFS partitions *unless* some NTFS driver has been loaded for it on that disk. And it's not on a standard Win9x/DOS startup disk.

Dos Fdisk will see NTFS partitions but it cannot read them and I think that's what Anna was taking about.



To clarify: what I think you are saying is that the Win9x version of FDISK will recognise and allow you to delete NTFS partitions. What it can't do is create new NTFS partitions.

You don't "create" NTFS partitions, or FAT16 or FAT32 partitions. Fdisk cannot create an NTFS or FAT32 partition. All that fdisk can do is create the partitions, it cannot give them a file system. The file system of the partition (NTFS, FAT32, etc) is established when the partition is formatted, with DOS format.com establishes the file system for the partition and, of course, format.com cannot format to the NTFS file system.

John

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