toast: can't get back to fat32 on removable drive

[Cagdas Ozgenc]

Greetings,

I purchased a USB2.0 interface 40GB external drive. It came with FAT32
formatted. I formatted it with NTFS while I was experimenting with it. I
realized (a little late) that I needed FAT32 for plugging it to other
computers with various O/Ss. Now I cannot format it with FAT32 due to XP
limitation.

People have suggested booting with an old windows boot disk. Firstly, I do
not have access to an old windows version at the moment to create a boot
disk. Secondly, I heavily doubt that the drive will be available without
appropriate DOS drivers, which I do not have.

Is there a FREE utility that I can download from the internet to achieve
this task? Or am I toasted?

Thanks

 

[Wendy\(v-2wends\)]

If you did a format with NTFS, did you do a clean installation of the
operating system?
If so then you can boot from the windows xp cd, delete the partitions with
it and create new ones, then choose to format it with the Fat 32 option.
Only catch is, that you can only choose Fat32 with a partition that is under
32 gigs. If it is more then 32 gigs, it will want you to do a NTFS format.
However, making this extra partition, gives room for backup information and
other things.
Here is an article that explains it a bit more
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316941

 

[Alex Nichol]

I purchased a USB2.0 interface 40GB external drive. It came with FAT32
formatted. I formatted it with NTFS while I was experimenting with it. I
realized (a little late) that I needed FAT32 for plugging it to other
computers with various O/Ss. Now I cannot format it with FAT32 due to XP
limitation.

People have suggested booting with an old windows boot disk. Firstly, I do
not have access to an old windows version at the moment to create a boot
disk. Secondly, I heavily doubt that the drive will be available without
appropriate DOS drivers, which I do not have.

Is there a FREE utility that I can download from the internet to achieve
this task? Or am I toasted?

You ought to be able to do it with BootIT NG, from
http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

Boot the floppy, Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on
Partition work. This should show a USB 2.0 drive, and you could then
highlight the existing partition, Delete it, Create a new one to be FAT
32 and then Format it (safer than trying to change type and then
format)