Windows Vista USB 2.0 external 2.5" 80gb drive

I recently increased the size of the HDD on an HP laptop. This left me with a small drive which I thought could be pressed into service on my upscale DVD player, which has a USB input, and as I had put it in an external USB enclosure, no problems thought I.

OK the DVD needs FAT32 and the drive was formatted NTFS.

Hopefully a re-format would have me in business - wrong!

The only options offered by Format are NTFS and exFAT?

I tried the latter and the DVD would NOT recognise it.

OK, time to call in the clever souls at WindowsBBS. A search produced the following answer to a similar problem from back in April 2009:

It may be the way the partition was made. You may have a struggle on your hands trying to access the data on the drive. If you don't need the data, remove the partition/s on the drive and make a new one (in Disk Management, right-click on the partition and select Delete Volume). If you then format the drive as FAT32 it will be easier to work on than if you format as NTFS, but cannot handle files larger than 4GB.


Perfect thought I! - wrong again.

Alas, no matter how I try, (delete volume, re-partition both with and without assigned drive letter), when format is chosen, the options are as you may have guessed exactly the same as in the standard format function, that is NO FAT32 option.

Is it me?, something about the MBR on the target drive? or Vista Home Premium?

I have tried this on an XP laptop and XP pro doesn't offer ANYTHING but NTFS?

Thanks for any help/advice.

 

Whilst waiting for a reply, I had a quick look in Acronis True Image and Eureka!! - I found a really neat re-partitioning and formatting routine with a choice of about a dozen different file formats including FAT32! - Great!

Acronis actually reported the HDD as FAT16 which is presumably what you get under Vista when choosing exFAT.

Only problem is Sumvision DVD player STILL doesn't recognise it! - Back to the drawing board I guess!

It would still be interesting to know if formatting in FAT32 IS available in Windows?

 

Does your DVD player not have an option to format the drive, My PVR is the same when the HD is formatted via windows the PVR does not recognise the filesystem but when formatting on the PVR everything is fine.

 

Unfortunately this is a 25 quid Amazon cheapie - it has USB and HDMI with hd upscaling but not much else.

I managed to suss it out by ignoring the Acronis advice and formatting the drive as a primary partition rather than a logical drive - it now works fine - thanks anyway

 

Thanks for letting us know you got it sorted, and you've given me something to look at regarding my PVR

Please mark your thread as 'Resolved'.

 

Problem not actually resolved. I did say in my additional post that I would like to know HOW to format FAT32 under Windows. The Moderators obviously spotted that.

 

As the drive is larger than 32GB windows will only offer to format in NTFS without using additional tools (in your case Acronis).

Not sure what you mean? If you mean because it's not been marked resolved that is your responsibility. If on the other hand you mean the thanks you received, I done that

 

What I meant was that it had not been resolved, (at least until your comment regarding the 32gb limit, which was totally new to me, and if correct - yet another Microsoft scam).

After all, I resolved it using a third party package, (Acronis), which not everybody has or wishes to pay for.

PLUS Vista does offer exFAT (whatever that may be), as well as NTFS, and when formatted this way, as previously mentioned, Acronis reported it as FAT16!!! - so how do the MVPs, geeks or gurus explain that?

AND as noted in the very first post in this thread, mattman had advised reformatting FAT32 under Windows Vista back in April 2009!

Most USB DVDs, PVRs and set top boxes seem to specify FAT32, and not ALL devices offer a formatting facility, so this is going to be a problem which crops up for MANY non PC specialist users.

Once I am happy that ALL queries have been satisfactorily answered, I will flag it resolved - (I always do if you check the records).

It's a bit like being diagnosed with a terminal illness - always good to get another opinion

 

Limitations of FAT32 File System (refers to Win2k but similar KB's exist for XP and Vista).

Description of the exFAT file system driver update package

Quite likely, as I implied earlier I had similar issues.

I hope all your queries are answered now

 

Thank heavens for utilities like Acronis then!

Since I use the laptop mainly for on-line email and browsing the internet with Firefox plus photo/video storage and using third party photo edit, backup and browser software, maybe it's time (like the rest of my family to start looking at the Macbook - no viruses, no microsoft, no IE 7/8/9, much less security issues, etc, etc., etc.)