Fat32 Partition bigger than 32 GB

  • Thread starter Thread starter facugaich
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facugaich

So, after trying several options I just let WinXp's Install program
create a 32GB partition. After that, I resized that partition (using
gparted from Ubuntu) to 42 GB. That left a 42GB partition with 16kb
blocks... Do you think I won't have problems accessing the lasta 10GB
of the partition?
 
The limitation to 32 GB is an artificial limitation programmed in to XP and
only affects creating partitions. XP will work fine with any size of FAT32
partition. It just won't create ones larger than 32 GB.
 
Yeah, I know. But partitions bigger than 32 GB are supossed to have a
32Kb block size... and since I created this one as 32GB and then
resized it to 42GB the result was a 42GB partition with a 16Kb block
size. Do you think it is safe to have it like that?
 
So, after trying several options I just let WinXp's Install program
create a 32GB partition. After that, I resized that partition (using
gparted from Ubuntu) to 42 GB. That left a 42GB partition with 16kb
blocks... Do you think I won't have problems accessing the lasta 10GB
of the partition?
Click to expand...




Why would you *want* to use a crap file system like FAT?

The cluster size is wrong for the partition size by the way ... good luck.

John
 
It shouldn't matter but I'm not an expert on FAT32. I do remember back in
the win98 days many people changed the cluster size when formatting disks to
try and make their use more efficient. It didn't seem cause a problem other
than some utilities reporting the wrong disk size. Personally the only time
I use FAT32 is on external drives that need to shared with older computers
running win9x.
 
John said:
Why would you *want* to use a crap file system like FAT?
Click to expand...

I did not post in the group to discuss my file system choice, and so I
won't
The cluster size is wrong for the partition size by the way ... good luck.
Click to expand...

I already know it's wrong, as I stated in my previous post. I want to
know how can that affect the partition.
 
So, after trying several options I just let WinXp's Install program
create a 32GB partition. After that, I resized that partition (using
gparted from Ubuntu) to 42 GB. That left a 42GB partition with 16kb
blocks... Do you think I won't have problems accessing the lasta 10GB
of the partition?
Click to expand...

No problem. 32K clusters are default for drives >32GB but there
is no problem with 16K clusters. It's definitely not invalid.

With smaller cluster you get a bigger FAT which cause some overhead.

The german computer magazine c't tried to format an 128GB drive
with FAT32 and 1K clusters. It results in 1GB per FAT, ScanDisk
didn't work but CHKDSK did with an extrem memory usage. XP itself
had no problem.
They offer a commandline tool to format large drives with FAT32.
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#format


Greetings from Germany

Uwe
 
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