I was reading the other messages about this on here.
How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
drives were the same.

From: <catatonic-(E-Mail Removed)>

| I was reading the other messages about this on here.
| How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
| I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
| drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
| number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
| drives were the same.


You mean "FAT32 or NTFS".

If your hard disk is greater than 32GB then you are using NTFS.

XP does not provide a way to format drives greater than 32GB using the FAT32 scheme.

The drive model has NO bearing on this subject matter except that the model suggests the
size of the disk.

--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

<catatonic-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...

> I was reading the other messages about this on here.
> How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
> I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
> drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
> number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
> drives were the same.

/ Control Panel / Admin Tools / Computer Management / Storage / Disk
Management
shows each drive (in the right panel) with its (size and) type.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

It's NTFS, and it's nothing to do with the physical structure of your Hard
drive, it's your file structure, as Basic as I can keep it, FAT32 has a 4 Gig
File size limit, NTFS doesn't, Also NTFS is more robust than FAT32 and better
at correcting errors.
Open windows explorer and right click on your C drive, choose properties it
should list the file structure and available free space, as well as used
space. Note this is not referred to as Memory, it's either free space or used
space. Ie you have a 80Gig Hd, when formatted you will not see all 80 Gig as
available, once the operating system is installed, you will see used space
listed and available space.

"catatonic-(E-Mail Removed)" wrote:

> I was reading the other messages about this on here.
> How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
> I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
> drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
> number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
> drives were the same.
>
>
> .
>

On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:31:55 -0500, catatonic-(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> I was reading the other messages about this on here.
> How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?


You mean NTFS.

In My Computer, right-click the drive and choose "Properties." It will
tell you there.


> I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
> drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
> number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
> drives were the same.


Hard drives are the same in some resects and different in other
respects. But FAT32 and NTFS are not differences in the drives
themselves. Any drive can be either. The difference between FAT32 and
NTFS is a difference in what file system is put *on* the drive.


--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

catatonic-(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I was reading the other messages about this on here.
> How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
> I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
> drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
> number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
> drives were the same.
>
>
>
Disk Defragmenter gives the file system type...

"David H. Lipman" <DLipman~nospam~@Verizon.Net> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> From: <catatonic-(E-Mail Removed)>
>
> | I was reading the other messages about this on here.
> | How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
> | I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
> | drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
> | number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
> | drives were the same.
>
>
> You mean "FAT32 or NTFS".
>
> If your hard disk is greater than 32GB then you are using NTFS.
>
> XP does not provide a way to format drives greater than 32GB using the
> FAT32 scheme.
>
> The drive model has NO bearing on this subject matter except that the
> model suggests the
> size of the disk.
>
> --
> Dave
> http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
> Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp
>
>

David, slight correction to your post. While XP will not format a drive
larger than 32 GB XP can be installed onto a FAT32 drive that has been
formatted by another OS (98 or ME, etc.) or method larger than 32 GB. Just
because the OP has a drive of 80 GB does not mean that it is formatted as
NTFS. Others have posted the various ways that it can be determined if FAT
32 or NTFS is used.

catatonic-(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I was reading the other messages about this on here.
> How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
> I went to control panel and somewhere in there it says the word
> drives, but all it shows me is what I assume is the drive model
> number. I never knew there was a diffwerence. I thought all hard
> drives were the same.
>

Start ; Run : diskmgmt.msc

Disks are broken up into pieces called "Partitions". When you look
in Disk Management, you're seeing boxes representing partitions or
empty spaces. In the list at the top of Disk Management, there is a
column called "File System", and that shows the file system used
on that particular partition.

A disk can have multiple partitions. Right now, my disks have four
partitions on each. Some of my partitions are FAT32 and some are
NTFS. I make NTFS partitions, when I know I'll need to store files
having a size over 4GB. FAT32 only supports files up to a maximum size
of 4GB. Some utility software, if it sees you're using FAT32, will
break up an output file into smaller pieces, to fit within that limit.
If you're doing downloads, and you attempt to download a >4GB file
onto a C: drive formatted FAT32, that can result in the download
being stopped. The browser may be using the %temp% directory for
the download, and overflowing that is what may stop your download.
FAT32 is fine, as long as you keep that 4GB limit in mind when doing
stuff. If you worked a lot with large files used for preparing
DVDs, then FAT32 might not be a good choice.

There are utilities available, that can format a partition with the
FAT32 file system, for partitions larger than 32GB. I think you can
have a FAT32 partition up to 2TB in size, but it might not be the most
efficient way to store files. Microsoft encouraged NTFS, by making
their FAT32 formatter stop at 32GB, but since the file system
supports more than that, a third party utility will let you do
what you want.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ind...at32format.htm

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/dow...at32format.zip

Once unzipped, that gives the command line program "fat32format.exe".

The 2TB limit for FAT32 is mentioned here (2TB if you want to
boot from it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat32#FAT32

HTH,
Paul

From: "LVTravel" <(E-Mail Removed)>

| David, slight correction to your post. While XP will not format a drive
| larger than 32 GB XP can be installed onto a FAT32 drive that has been
| formatted by another OS (98 or ME, etc.) or method larger than 32 GB. Just
| because the OP has a drive of 80 GB does not mean that it is formatted as
| NTFS. Others have posted the various ways that it can be determined if FAT
| 32 or NTFS is used.

That's correct.
However if the OP has to ASK about FAT vs. NTFS (and not even get the acronym right) then
the OP would not know how to format the drive with Win9x/ME, FreeDOS, etc.

You would be EXTREMELY hard pressed to find a system purchased with XP on 80GB using
FAT32. I don't even think Sony did that with their Vaio crap.

--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

"David H. Lipman" <DLipman~nospam~@Verizon.Net> wrote in message
news:#n$(E-Mail Removed)...
> From: "LVTravel" <(E-Mail Removed)>
>
> | David, slight correction to your post. While XP will not format a drive
> | larger than 32 GB XP can be installed onto a FAT32 drive that has been
> | formatted by another OS (98 or ME, etc.) or method larger than 32 GB.
> Just
> | because the OP has a drive of 80 GB does not mean that it is formatted
> as
> | NTFS. Others have posted the various ways that it can be determined if
> FAT
> | 32 or NTFS is used.
>
> That's correct.
> However if the OP has to ASK about FAT vs. NTFS (and not even get the
> acronym right) then
> the OP would not know how to format the drive with Win9x/ME, FreeDOS, etc.
>
> You would be EXTREMELY hard pressed to find a system purchased with XP on
> 80GB using
> FAT32. I don't even think Sony did that with their Vaio crap.
>
> --
> Dave
> http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
> Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp
>
>

Probably not within the last 3 or 4 years but Sony actually did. The VAIO
crap that I bought years ago (2.4 GB Pentium, 1 GB RAM,) and is still
running strong, had a 80 GB drive partitioned C: as 20 GB FAT32 and D : was
<60GB as FAT32 with DVD-R and CD-RW drives as E: and F:. Didn't take me
long to change to NTFS but I had to. I have seen older Dells shipped with
FAT32 drives larger than 40 GB & XP and also have seen many retail boxed
HDDs formatted as FAT32. Someone who doesn't know about formatting could
install one of the retail purchased drives and install XP onto it and never
know the formatting of the drive until they tried to copy a file larger than
4 GB of course. Granted in the OP's case this probably wasn't what
happened.