NTFS and FAT32

[darkrats]

I have one physical HD and 3 partitions. All are FAT32.

When I right-click on a partition and choose "format" I get a choice of NTFS
or FAT32.
That is, on two of the partitions. The third one (currently FAT32) allows
one kind of formatting and that is NTFS. Is there anyway to get back the
option for FAT32 for that particular partition?


Thanks.

 

[David Candy]

make it smaller

 

[Mark Weinreb]

I have one physical HD and 3 partitions. All are FAT32.

When I right-click on a partition and choose "format" I get a choice of
NTFS or FAT32.
That is, on two of the partitions. The third one (currently FAT32) allows
one kind of formatting and that is NTFS. Is there anyway to get back the
option for FAT32 for that particular partition?


Thanks.

Is that partition larger than 32 GB? Windows XP can only format a partition
larger than 32 GB as NTFS, although it is more than happy to use one. NTFS
is far more efficient with large partitions than FAT32 as the cluster size
doesn't change leading to less wasted space. FAT32 clusters on drives
greater then 32 GB are huge, and therefore wasteful.

 

[Dan]

Any way that the industry could make FAT32 work better in larger hard
drives?

 

[Tim Slattery]

Any way that the industry could make FAT32 work better in larger hard
drives?

No. The FAT design simply doesn't scale well.

 

[Dan]

Thanks Tim! I appreciate the response.

No. The FAT design simply doesn't scale well.

 

[Malke]

Any way that the industry could make FAT32 work better in larger hard
drives?

This isn't an "industry" setting. The limitations come from the FAT32
file system. Since this file system was used in older MS operating
systems (and can still be used with XP, although it isn't the best
choice), there won't be any changes to it. For XP, use NTFS instead.

Malke

 

[David Candy]

Fat28 (as it was only Fat 28 with 4 bits reserved) is faster and better for a limited range of tasks involving very large files (or small hard disks).

 

[Dan]

Two hard drives on dual boot system:
98SE -- Fat32
XP -- NTFS
Already done! Thanks anyway!

 

[Alex Nichol]

When I right-click on a partition and choose "format" I get a choice of NTFS
or FAT32.
That is, on two of the partitions. The third one (currently FAT32) allows
one kind of formatting and that is NTFS. Is there anyway to get back the
option for FAT32 for that particular partition?

That partition will be bigger than 32GB. XP will only format
partitions that size as NTFS. You could FDISK (start with delete
non-DOS partition) and Format from a Win98 startup floppy, but I would
not go beyond 64GB - indeed I would not use FAT above 32GB anyway

There is no reason why you should not use a mix of NTFS and FAT
partitions

 

[Dan]

Definately an interesting idea, Alex. My current hard drives are 40
gigabytes on the 98SE side and 80 gigabytes on the NTFS with Windows XP
Professional SP2 side. I guess I could tighten things up by having two
partitions on the 98SE side.

 

[darkrats]

Thanks for the responses.
I had forgotten about the large partition limit.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I have one physical HD and 3 partitions. All are FAT32.

When I right-click on a partition and choose "format" I get a
choice
of NTFS or FAT32.
That is, on two of the partitions. The third one (currently
FAT32)
allows one kind of formatting and that is NTFS. Is there anyway
to
get back the option for FAT32 for that particular partition?

Is that third one larger than 32GB? Windows XP can not format a
FAT32 partition larger than 32GB (although it will happily use
one if created externally). If you want to do this, you have to
do it by booting from a DOS diskette and using its fdisk command.