Re: Reformatting External hard drive from NTFS to FAT32

From: Art (noonehere_at_longone.net)
Date: 12/21/04 

Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 12:56:04 -0500

"almara" <almara@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:66160FA3-A5D4-457A-B636-1B58E1230C93@microsoft.com...
>I have an external hard drive running on XP SP2 which I originally
>formatted
> in NTFS. My daughter now wishes to use it at college on a Mac which I
> understand will only work with FAT32. I followed the undernoted procedure
> to
> reformat the drive to FAT32 but after reformatting it has remained at
> NTFS.
> Any suggestions as to what the problem might be or any other way I can get
> back to FAT 32?
>
>
> -- 1. Formatting an XP System Disk by booting from the XP CD is
> accomplished by loading the Recovery Console by typing R at the first
> window.
>
> 2. After selecting the Windows installation you want to access and typing
> in the Admin password [leave blank if no password was created] you will
> see a command prompt.
>
> 3. Type Map & press ENTER
>
> 4. Note the letter designation of the drive you want to format. [write it
> down]
>
> 5. Type format x:<space>/fs:fat32 then press ENTER, where x is the drive
> letter you want to format. Substitute NTFS or FAT if desired.
>
> 6. Type Y to confirm your selection and then type exit & press ENTER to >
> restart computer.
>
> almara

Almara:
The problem is that the XP OS will not allow you (or anyone else for that
matter!) to create and format a hard disk partition in FAT32 that's greater
than 32 GB, although the OS will recognize a FAT32 formatted drive of any
capacity without any complaint. (You didn't indicate the size of your USB
external hard drive but I'm assuming it's > 32 GB). Why that specific
limitation was imposed is something I and others have never understood, but
there it is. Probably because Microsoft was (and is) eager for users to use
the NTFS file system and wanted to discourage the use of the FAT32 file
system. In any event, that limitation is a fact of life in a XP environment.

But there is a workaround. First you'll need to uninstall the hard drive
from its USB external hard drive enclosure and install that drive as an
internal drive in your computer. Now that may be a problem (to say the
least) if your USB EHD is, in effect, a sealed unit and there's no practical
way for the disk's removal and subsequent installation back into the
enclosure. Another consideration is that if it is a commercial USB EHD,
removing the drive will most certainly void the warranty. So this might not
be a practical solution to your dilemma. But I'll go on in case you can
proceed with the drive's removal and installation as an internal drive in
your computer.

Using a Win9x/Me Startup Disk that contains the DOS commands, you boot up
with that floppy disk. You'll use the FDISK command to first delete the
"non-DOS" partition, i.e., your present NTFS partition and then use FDISK to
create a FAT32 partition. Then using the FORMAT command, format the
partition. There is no partition/format capacity limitation in this
instance.

If the preceding process is practical in your circumstances and you need
step-by-step instructions for using the FDISK and FORMAT commands, so
indicate in a subsequent posting. If you don't have a Win9x/Me Startup Disk,
do a Google search for "DOS boot disk". You may wonder why you simply can't
use those DOS boot disk commands to partition/format your USB EHD without
the bother of removing the HD and installing it as an internal drive in your
computer. It's because DOS won't recognize a USB device for the purpose of
partitioning/formatting the drive. At least that has been my experience. I
have heard reports from other users that they could directly
partition/format a USB EHD using a DOS boot disk, but that capability has
eluded me. But you may want to give it a try. Naturally you'll return the
drive to its USB enclosure after the partitioning/formatting.
Art

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