How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?

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catatonic-state

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: <[email protected]>

| 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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

/ Control Panel / Admin Tools / Computer Management / Storage / Disk
Management
shows each drive (in the right panel) with its (size and) type.
 
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.
 
I was reading the other messages about this on here.
How can I tell if my hard drive is fat32 or ntft?
Click to expand...


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.
Click to expand...


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.
 
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.
Click to expand...
Disk Defragmenter gives the file system type...
 
David H. Lipman said:
From: <[email protected]>

| 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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

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/index.htm?fat32format.htm

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/download/fat32format.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" <[email protected]>

| 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.
 
David H. Lipman said:
From: "LVTravel" <[email protected]>

| 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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
Click to expand...

You mean that win98 or win-me DID allow bigger than 32 gig drives and
XP dont? Isnt that sort of backwards? Especially when they now sell
1000gig drives (I think they call that a trigabyte).

My drive is a 40gig and I used one method mentioned on here and it has
NTFS (spelled right this time). I would like to add another 40gig
drive. I do know how to put in another drive, and probably have to
change a jumper. But how do I get it to be NTFS? Or, dont it matter
what I use on a second drive? I'd actually like to get an 80gig or
bigger drive, but if I cant use more than 32 gigs, whats the point.

The funny thing is that my 12 year old computer with win98 has 3 hard
drives with a total of 160 gigs. And I thought XP was supposed to be
superior.

By the way. how the heck do I make a shortcut for control panel on
the desktop with XP? In win98, it was just like making any other
shortcut, but in XP, the right click mouse dont give that option. Why
not? So far, XP is much harder to use than win98, and everyone told
me it was easier. WRONG.
 
From: <[email protected]>

| You mean that win98 or win-me DID allow bigger than 32 gig drives and
| XP dont? Isnt that sort of backwards? Especially when they now sell
| 1000gig drives (I think they call that a trigabyte).

| My drive is a 40gig and I used one method mentioned on here and it has
| NTFS (spelled right this time). I would like to add another 40gig
| drive. I do know how to put in another drive, and probably have to
| change a jumper. But how do I get it to be NTFS? Or, dont it matter
| what I use on a second drive? I'd actually like to get an 80gig or
| bigger drive, but if I cant use more than 32 gigs, whats the point.

| The funny thing is that my 12 year old computer with win98 has 3 hard
| drives with a total of 160 gigs. And I thought XP was supposed to be
| superior.

| By the way. how the heck do I make a shortcut for control panel on
| the desktop with XP? In win98, it was just like making any other
| shortcut, but in XP, the right click mouse dont give that option. Why
| not? So far, XP is much harder to use than win98, and everyone told
| me it was easier. WRONG.

Win9x/ME defaulte to formatting in FAT32 because they were DIS based OS' while XP is a NT
based OS, WinXP will format a 20GB drive as FAT32 but anything larger than 32GB will be
formatted as NTFS and you won't see a FAT32 selection available.

XP is is easy to use, it is just different beacuse it is a NT based OS There were two
families; Win9x/ME and NT. Now there is only one and that is NT and NT4, Win2K, XP,
Vista and Windows 7 are in that family.

As for adding a second drive, you would be hard pressed to find another 40GB hard disk.
If your system has 40GB then it has some age to it and you have an IDE/EIDE disk
sub-system and if you wanted to add an internal hard disk you would have to get a IDE/EIDE
hard disk, Depending upon its age and BIOS its possible that it won't see a hard disak
132GB in size.
Click to expand...

You do not NEED a Cotrol Panel icon on the desktop. You can easily get to the Control
Panel via; Start --> settings --> control panel
 
You mean that win98 or win-me DID allow bigger than 32 gig drives and
XP dont? Isnt that sort of backwards? Especially when they now sell
1000gig drives (I think they call that a trigabyte).
Click to expand...

NO, DOS based Windows CAN'T handle NTFS, they HAVE to use FAT32. XP can
handle any size drive, BUT will NOT create a FAT32 partition greater
than 32 GIGs by design because NTFS is better for handling large drives.
 
You mean that win98 or win-me DID allow bigger than 32 gig drives and
XP dont? Isnt that sort of backwards?
Click to expand...

In Win95/98/ME you couldn't use NTFS. The only choice you had for a
large partition was NTFS. So yes, those systems allowed you to create
horribly large FAT32 partitions.

SP/Vista/Win7 will use a FAT32 partition of any size. But the software
that comes with the OS will not create a FAT32 partition larger than
32GB, because NTFS is available and it's a MUCH better choice for huge
partitions.
I would like to add another 40gig
drive. I do know how to put in another drive, and probably have to
change a jumper. But how do I get it to be NTFS?
Click to expand...

When you start the computer after installing the new drive, it won't
show up in Windows Explorer. You'll have to start Disk Manager and
create at least one partition on it. You'll be able to choose which
file system to use on each partition you create.
Or, dont it matter what I use on a second drive?
Click to expand...

No more and no less than on any other partition.

I'd actually like to get an 80gig or
bigger drive, but if I cant use more than 32 gigs, whats the point.
Click to expand...

Did I miss something? If you're running XP you can use any size disk.
You'll be FAR better off using NTFS for huge partitions.

By the way. how the heck do I make a shortcut for control panel on
the desktop with XP?
Click to expand...

Try this: open the Start menu, and find the Control Panel shortcut.
Right-click it and drag it to the desktop.
 
Bob said:
NO, DOS based Windows CAN'T handle NTFS, they HAVE to use FAT32. XP can
handle any size drive, BUT will NOT create a FAT32 partition greater
than 32 GIGs by design because NTFS is better for handling large drives.
Click to expand...

There is this package, but maybe I'm not on the same wavelength.

http://www.free-av.com/en/download/11/avira_ntfs4dos_personal.html

I gave that a try, and it doesn't support file names properly.
So if I ran DIR, all I got was 8.3 crap. I couldn't possibly navigate
anywhere on an NTFS partition with that. If I had a directory listing
taken from some other environment, to hold in my hand, maybe I could
do something with it.

Paul
 
[email protected] said:
You mean that win98 or win-me DID allow bigger than 32 gig drives and
XP dont? Isnt that sort of backwards? Especially when they now sell
1000gig drives (I think they call that a trigabyte).

My drive is a 40gig and I used one method mentioned on here and it has
NTFS (spelled right this time). I would like to add another 40gig
drive. I do know how to put in another drive, and probably have to
change a jumper. But how do I get it to be NTFS? Or, dont it matter
what I use on a second drive? I'd actually like to get an 80gig or
bigger drive, but if I cant use more than 32 gigs, whats the point.

The funny thing is that my 12 year old computer with win98 has 3 hard
drives with a total of 160 gigs. And I thought XP was supposed to be
superior.

By the way. how the heck do I make a shortcut for control panel on
the desktop with XP?
Click to expand...


Cilck Start, Settings, right click Control Panel from the menu, select
Explore. Control Panel opens, click File, point to Control Panel in menu,
select Create Shortcut. Windows asks if you would like to place shortcut on
desktop, click Yes.

Convoluted, but it works.


In win98, it was just like making any other
 
Nice utility if push comes to shove but you aren't changing the fact
that MS-DOS Windows can't run off NTFS or even recognize NTFS partitions
without loading some utility after it's booted.
 
In
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.
Click to expand...

Gads, so many posts and no one has bothered to answer the question. What a
waste of ego and BW.

To get a look at all your drives and see what they are in XP, click :
Start;
Programs;
Administrative Tools
Computer Management
Disk Management. In disk management it will show you all drives the system
sees, their file type (NTFS or FATxx) and lots more.

A quicker way to get there is to click Start; Run and type

diskmgmt.msc

in the bos and press OK. That'll bring up the same window.

There are several other ways to see this same data but this way gives you
all of them at once.


HTH,



Twayne`
 
You mean that win98 or win-me DID allow bigger than 32 gig drives and
XP dont?
Click to expand...


No, they both do.

Isnt that sort of backwards? Especially when they now sell
1000gig drives (I think they call that a trigabyte).
Click to expand...


No, it's a "terabyte." And a terabyte is not 1000GB, it's 1024GB. All
the names like this (kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte,
etc.) are 1024 times larger than their predecessor.
 
Twayne said:
In

Gads, so many posts and no one has bothered to answer the question. What a
waste of ego and BW.
Click to expand...


Actually, several people provided the OP with multiple routes to obtain
the information sought. Had you not been looking primarily for
troll-bait, you'd have noticed.


--

Bruce Chambers

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