I have a PC with C & F drives. My F drive is a striped 4
80gb array via a Promise Ultra133 TX2 controller. I want to
reformat this drive from NTFS to FAT32. Do I do a clean
install or upgrade from my Win2k CD to accomplish this? I
don't want to lose any software on C drive.
After backing up your F drive data:
1. Open a CMD prompt.
2. Use the format command:
:\>format /?
FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/A:size] [/C] [/X]
volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
/FS:filesystem Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS).
/V:label Specifies the volume label.
/Q Performs a quick format.
/C NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be compressed
by default.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened
handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
/A:size Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default settings
are strongly recommended for general use.
NTFS supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K.
FAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
FAT32 supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
Note that the FAT and FAT32 files systems impose the
following restrictions on the number of clusters on a volume:
FAT: Number of clusters <= 65526
FAT32: 65526 < Number of clusters < 4177918
Format will immediately stop processing if it decides that
the above requirements cannot be met using the specified
cluster size.
NTFS compression is not supported for allocation unit sizes
above 4096.
Jerold Schulman
Windows: General MVP
JSI, Inc.
http://www.jsiinc.com