Formatting a new Hard Drive as FAT32

[Guest]

I just bought a new external hard drive.
I want it to be FAT32.
I intend to move large video files (over 4GB) from Mac to PC.

But I am unable to do a FAT32 format on the drive. In fact the WIndows dropdown doesn't even give me a FAT32 option, only NTFS.

 

[Mark Salloway]

Hi
If the drive is larger than 32Gb Windows XP will not let you format it as
FAT32 (because at this point the file system becomes very inefficient, using
32K clusters). However if you have access to an Windows 98 or higher you
should be able to format it as FAT32 there. You could also check if the
drive manufacturer offers any formatting utilities. The other thing is FAT32
does not support files greater than 4Gb in size so to transfer data larger
than this you might need to split the video files.

http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q314/4/63.asp

Mark.

 

[wayne]

NTFS is a much better choice as well as have some built in error checking.
If you are going to be using it for large files you can use a large cluster
size.

It usually causes waste as far as space goes but with large files it can
work well.

This a pretty good but simple comparison

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

and Microsoft's take

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/russel_october01.mspx

Wayne

 

[Mark Salloway]

Hi Wayne
In most cases I'd agree NTFS is the better file system, but the drive is
going to be used with a Mac. I think currently that Mac OSX can read but not
write to an NTFS drive. OSX may also allow you to format the drive as a
whole as it supports FAT32.

Mark

 

[jch]

You can use Partition Magic to easily format drive to FAT32.

I just bought a new external hard drive.
I want it to be FAT32.
I intend to move large video files (over 4GB) from Mac to PC.

But I am unable to do a FAT32 format on the drive. In fact the WIndows

dropdown doesn't even give me a FAT32 option, only NTFS.

 

[Don MI]

I just bought a new external hard drive.
I want it to be FAT32.
I intend to move large video files (over 4GB) from Mac to PC.

But I am unable to do a FAT32 format on the drive. In fact the WIndows

dropdown doesn't even give me a FAT32 option, only NTFS.

You could use Disk Management {Right click on My Computer and select Manage}
and delete the current partition on your external drive. Then create new
partitions of less than 32 Gb {say 30 or 31}. You should then be able to
format the new partitions as FAT32.

I am not familiar with Mac computers. Can the Mac you are going to use
format the external drive as a single partition using FAT32?

Don

 

[Guest]

No, I cannot do a FAT32 format on the Mac.
Mac has it's own proprietary format which Windows cannot read.