reformating a FAT drive

[Guest]

I was given a 250GB external hard drive as a gift. Would it be better to
reformat this drive to NTFS, or leave it at FAT, if I plan to use it for
backup (and maybe for stoing video files)?

 

[longman]

I was given a 250GB external hard drive as a gift. Would it be better to
reformat this drive to NTFS, or leave it at FAT, if I plan to use it for
backup (and maybe for stoing video files)?

Your only choice is NTFS.

 

[Rock]

Not so. Many of these large drives come formatted in FAT32, and there are
tools to do so, it just can't be done with Win XP.

 

[Noncompliant]

If your PC is only one using it, and only accessed in XP, NTFS.

 

[Guest]

The drive is FAT32. The OS is Win XP Home. Are you saying that Win XP home
does not have the capability to reformat it to NTFS?

 

[Tim Slattery]

The drive is FAT32. The OS is Win XP Home. Are you saying that Win XP home
does not have the capability to reformat it to NTFS?

XP cannot - or maybe it's more accurate to say it will not - create a
FAT32 partition larger than 32GB. That's because NTFS is available and
is a *much* better choice for huge partitions.

I would recommend that OP convert his gigantic drive to NTFS.

 

[Ron Martell]

The drive is FAT32. The OS is Win XP Home. Are you saying that Win XP home
does not have the capability to reformat it to NTFS?

If you have a 250 gb FAT32 drive then it must be using a huge cluster
size, which can result in a lot of "slack" space if you store large
numbers of small files on it.

Also FAT32 has a 4 gb maximum file size limit so that might also cause
complications at the other end of the size spectrum if you are using
it for video files.

I therefore think you should convert this drive to NTFS. This cannot
be done by reformatting and if you use the FAT32 to NTFS conversion
utility that comes with Windows XP there is a possibility that the
converted drive will have 512 byte clusters because of a partition
boundary alignment issue that often occurs when converting.

So what I suggest that you do is to first copy anything important off
of the drive onto another drive then use DISKMGMT in Windows XP to
delete the FAT32 partition completely and then create a new NTFS
partition on the empty drive.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2008)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Rock]

The drive is FAT32. The OS is Win XP Home. Are you saying that Win XP
home
does not have the capability to reformat it to NTFS?

No, I didn't say that. I was replying to longman who said that the only
option was NTFS, which is not true Yes you can reformat the drive to NTFS
with the tools in XP. What you can't do is format a drive as FAT32 in XP
larger than 32GB, but that can be done outside of XP with other tools.

That said, it depends on what you will be using the drive for. If it will
be shared with an OS that can't read NTFS then it has to be FAT. The
cluster size will be quite large for FAT32. So if the files are smaller,
then there will be a huge waste of space. If all the files will be quite
large, such as video files, that are significantly larger than the cluster
size then FAT32 would be ok, and in some cases might be a bit faster.

So it comes down to what you want to use it for.