Proggy to convert NTFS to FAT32 please - TIA

  • Thread starter Thread starter PeterT
  • Start date Start date
PeterT said:
Peter

Don't tell me I can't - tell me how I can!
Click to expand...

http://faq.arstechnica.com/link.php?i=1820
One thing stated in this article is inaccurate for sure, and that is
that Windows cannot format a FAT32 Partition over 32GB in size. So how
did it then format my 120GB drive as one volume?

I know of no freeware solution to your problem other than backing up the
volume, reformatting it, and then restoring it.

Good luck
HK
 
The only package I've heard of taht might be able to do a 'reverse' convert,
is Partition Magic. And unfortunately, this is not free. Besides I
understood the results were marginal at the best...

Goodluck

MightyKitten
 
SINNER said:
While strolling through alt.comp.freeware, H-Man was overheard
plotting:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;184006
Click to expand...
This was very interesting David, thanks for that. I had never considered
that the Win2K would be different there. Anyway, I can say for certain
that Windows'98SE did in fact format my 120GB Seagate drive, it took a
long time, but it did format it without generating an error. The drive
is quite useable, very fast, and has not yet dropped a byte.
HK
 
While strolling through alt.comp.freeware, H-Man was overheard
plotting:
This was very interesting David, thanks for that. I had never
considered that the Win2K would be different there. Anyway, I can
say for certain that Windows'98SE did in fact format my 120GB
Seagate drive, it took a long time, but it did format it without
generating an error. The drive is quite useable, very fast, and
has not yet dropped a byte. HK
Click to expand...

Glad I could help :)
 
MightyKitten said:
The only package I've heard of taht might be able to do a 'reverse' convert,
is Partition Magic. And unfortunately, this is not free. Besides I
understood the results were marginal at the best...

Goodluck
Click to expand...

AFAIK Partition Commander (PAYWARE ALERT and OT) can do it as well. I
have never used either to do this, and probably never will. Somehow
going back to FAT32 seems wrong once you've gone NTFS. Of course my
personal favorites are ReiserFS and EXT3. This of course excludes use
with Windows which doesn't break my heart. It would be really cool
though if someone wrote drivers for Windows that supported these
filesystems, it would be a vast improvement to Windows IMO.
HK
 
H-Man said:
Somehow
going back to FAT32 seems wrong once you've gone NTFS. Of course my
personal favorites are ReiserFS and EXT3. This of course excludes use
with Windows which doesn't break my heart. It would be really cool
though if someone wrote drivers for Windows that supported these
filesystems, it would be a vast improvement to Windows IMO.
Click to expand...

Read-only access to EXT2 & EXT3:
<http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm>

EXT2 read/write access & EXT3 read access:
<http://sys.xiloo.com/projects/projects.htm>
(the author says it's *not* stable, use write support at your own risk!)
 
H-Man said:
This was very interesting David, thanks for that. I had never considered
that the Win2K would be different there. Anyway, I can say for certain
that Windows'98SE did in fact format my 120GB Seagate drive, it took a
long time, but it did format it without generating an error. The drive
is quite useable, very fast, and has not yet dropped a byte.
HK
Click to expand...



Try maxing out the drive or even going 2/3 to 3/4 full. Thats where
it failed on me.
 
This was very interesting David, thanks for that. I had never considered
that the Win2K would be different there. Anyway, I can say for certain
that Windows'98SE did in fact format my 120GB Seagate drive, it took a
long time, but it did format it without generating an error. The drive
is quite useable, very fast, and has not yet dropped a byte.
HK
Click to expand...
I had a heck of a time trying to format a 250GB drive in FAT32. What
I finally did is to format another small hard drive in FAT32 then use
Ghost to clone it to the bigger driver which automatically expand the
volume to the full disk. (Ghost is OT in this newsgroup but some
motherboard come with Ghost in the driver CD)
 
I had a heck of a time trying to format a 250GB drive in FAT32. What
Click to expand...

According to a Google, Windows 98 can in fact format FAT32 to its
theortical maximum of 2TB. And if Windows/98 FDisk is used to
partition the drive, Windows 2000 will install on one larger with a
FAT32 partition larger than 32GB. Windows 2000 just won't create one
that big because the cluster size becomes wasteful - and Bill wants to
lock you in to NTFS, of course.

See here:
http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/55319.html
 
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