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Formatting External Hard Drives

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by Wood-Duck, 2003/04/17.

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  1. 2003/04/17
    Wood-Duck

    Wood-Duck Inactive Thread Starter

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    I have 2 external USB2 40gb hard drives connected to an XP SP1 machine. When I attempt to use the Disk Manager to format these drives, I am only given the option of NTFS format, not FAT32.

    I am forced to connect them to a Win98 machine to format them in FAT32, then (of course) they work fine under WinXP.

    Anyone know why XP doesn't offer the FAT32 format option in this case???:confused:
     
    Wood-Duck,
    #1
  2. 2003/04/17
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    I came across this problem recently in formatting a 40 Gb Image Tank - essentially an external USB drive with a few gizmo's for digital image storage from a digital camera - which must be FAT32 to work properly. I used XP and then had to reformat on a Win ME m/c.

    My understanding is that Win XP will format anything of 32 Gb or higher as NTFS - less than 32 Gb you have the option of FAT32 or NTFS - maybe.

    I don't know if a FAT32 Win XP would format any size in FAT32 - my drives are all NTFS.
     
    PeteC,
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  4. 2003/04/17
    Steve R Jones

    Steve R Jones SuperGeek Staff

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    Instead of Disk Manager, try My Computer->Right Click Format
     
    Steve R Jones,
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  5. 2003/04/17
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    You cannot create a volume larger than 32 GB in size by using the FAT32 file system in Windows XP. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create one by using the Format tool. This behavior is by design.


    If you need to format a FAT32 volume greater than 32 GB, you can use a third-party partitioning utility to increase the size of the current Windows XP installation partition, or use the Fdisk utility on a Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk or a Microsoft Windows 98 Startup disk to reformat the hard disk entirely.


    Source: MSKB 316505
     
    Arie,
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