fat32 formatting

  • Thread starter Thread starter Maurice Matassa
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M

Maurice Matassa

I am running WinXPhomeSp2. Recently, I purchased two 250GB HDD'S and
attached them to a HDD controller. However, Windows Partition Wizard won't
let me format any partition larger than 32GB with FAT32. It insists on using
NTFS and I can't use that file format.

If I use FAT32 partitions, I will run out of drive letters (I've got 2 other
HDD's on my machine using drive letters up to Q:)

I tried using the command line "format x: /fs:fat32", but at the end of
formatting, it informed me that the drive (50GB) was too big for FAT32

Is there a way to exceed this 32GB barrier, since I can't use NTFS?

Any help would be appreciated.

M. Matassa
 
Use a win98 startup disk. Why can't you use NTFS? NTFS is the native file
system of Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista and is always recommended.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
|I am running WinXPhomeSp2. Recently, I purchased two 250GB HDD'S and
| attached them to a HDD controller. However, Windows Partition Wizard won't
| let me format any partition larger than 32GB with FAT32. It insists on
using
| NTFS and I can't use that file format.
|
| If I use FAT32 partitions, I will run out of drive letters (I've got 2
other
| HDD's on my machine using drive letters up to Q:)
|
| I tried using the command line "format x: /fs:fat32", but at the end of
| formatting, it informed me that the drive (50GB) was too big for FAT32
|
| Is there a way to exceed this 32GB barrier, since I can't use NTFS?
|
| Any help would be appreciated.
|
| M. Matassa
|
|
 
Maurice said:
I am running WinXPhomeSp2. Recently, I purchased two 250GB HDD'S and
attached them to a HDD controller. However, Windows Partition Wizard
won't let me format any partition larger than 32GB with FAT32. It
insists on using NTFS and I can't use that file format.

If I use FAT32 partitions, I will run out of drive letters (I've got
2 other HDD's on my machine using drive letters up to Q:)

I tried using the command line "format x: /fs:fat32", but at the end
of formatting, it informed me that the drive (50GB) was too big for
FAT32
Is there a way to exceed this 32GB barrier, since I can't use NTFS?
Click to expand...


Yes. The barrier is just a barrier to formatting FAT32 partitions larger
than 32MB, not to using them, Just boot from a Windows Me (or other)
diskette and fdisk and format them from there. Windows XP will happily use
the large FAT32 partitions.

Is the reason you can't use NTFS that you are dual booting to a
non-FAT32-aware operating system?
 
Maurice Matassa said:
I am running WinXPhomeSp2. Recently, I purchased two 250GB HDD'S and
attached them to a HDD controller. However, Windows Partition Wizard
won't let me format any partition larger than 32GB with FAT32. It
insists on using NTFS and I can't use that file format.

If I use FAT32 partitions, I will run out of drive letters (I've got
2 other HDD's on my machine using drive letters up to Q:)

I tried using the command line "format x: /fs:fat32", but at the end
of formatting, it informed me that the drive (50GB) was too big for
FAT32

Is there a way to exceed this 32GB barrier, since I can't use NTFS?
Click to expand...


32GB is the largest FAT32 partition that the *Microsoft* utilities
will create. Microsoft figures that if the partition is larger than
32GB then you should be using NTFS (because the slack space for
clusters on partitions larger than 32GB gets to be huge; i.e., you
waste a lot of space at the end of files that isn't used because their
space is allocated by clusters). See
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463/en-us and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006/. Above 32GB, cluster sizes
are 32KB in size. That means a 10-word note you write in a .txt file
will consume 32,768 bytes on the disk; see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192322/en-us.

One way to get FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB is to use a 3rd party
tools, like PartitionMagic (from Symantec) or Ranish Partition Manager
(free but not intuitive). You could also boot using a Win9x/MSDOS
floppy and use its FDISK program as long as you don't care about
losing the existing partitions and anything in them to delete them and
create bigger partitions. Go to bootdisk.com to get bootable floppy
images.

So why can't you use NTFS? It works great, uses far small cluster
sizes for less slack space in files, provides permissions and other
features, and is far less sensitive to file fragmentation. NTFS works
just fine in Windows XP Home.
 
Maurice Matassa said:
I am running WinXPhomeSp2. Recently, I purchased two 250GB HDD'S and
attached them to a HDD controller. However, Windows Partition Wizard won't
let me format any partition larger than 32GB with FAT32. It insists on
using NTFS and I can't use that file format.

If I use FAT32 partitions, I will run out of drive letters (I've got 2
other HDD's on my machine using drive letters up to Q:)

I tried using the command line "format x: /fs:fat32", but at the end of
formatting, it informed me that the drive (50GB) was too big for FAT32

Is there a way to exceed this 32GB barrier, since I can't use NTFS?

Any help would be appreciated.

M. Matassa
Click to expand...

Format XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/format_XP.htm

--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
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Mon, 3 Jul 2006 18:31:23 -0400 from Maurice Matassa
Is there a way to exceed this 32GB barrier, since I can't use NTFS?
Click to expand...

I don't know of one, but out of curiosity, why do you say you
"can't" use NTFS? It's generally superior, and these days even Linux
can read it.
 
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