Formatting External Hard Drive

[Ken Ellis]

I use Windows XP. I have just bought a Lacie 160gb USB 2.0 external hard
drive
which is already set up as FAT32. I want NTFS. Since no data is involved,
is my best choice to use the Format command rather than the 'Convert H:
FS:NTFS' with its possible cluster size problems?

Thanks for any help

Ken

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

Unless you have third party software to adjust the cluster size, some
partitioning applications can do this, formatting would be the better choice
and frankly the obvious one since there is no data on the drive to preserve.

 

[Chase Overmire]

If your going to format within windows, use disk
management.

Go to the controll panel, in administrative tools,
computer management, click disk management, right click
the lacie drive, format ntfs

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

Thank you, Chase for the catch and you're quite right, he can and should
format the disk from Disk Management. The instructions I posted are for
formatting the drive on which the OS resides as that cannot be formatted
while the OS is booted.