FAT32

I just read the vista help file and it says "you cannot create a partition
larger than 32GB using FAT32, so use NTFS". The strange thing is, I just
installed a Seagate external drive which was preformatted and it has a FAT32
FS with 298GB of free space. Could someone please tell me what's going on
here?

Cheers.

"Al" <> wrote in message
news:nB0gk.702$2...
>
> I just read the vista help file and it says "you cannot create a partition larger
> than 32GB using FAT32, so use NTFS". The strange thing is, I just installed a
> Seagate external drive which was preformatted and it has a FAT32 FS with 298GB of
> free space. Could someone please tell me what's going on here?

Older OSes could create FAT32 partitions over 32 GB but Microsoft eliminated
that option in XP and Vista. (To encourage people to use NTFS?)

Tom Lake

Hi!

> I just read the vista help file and it says "you cannot create a
> partition larger than 32GB using FAT32, so use NTFS".

What it's telling you is that the tools included with the operating
system cannot do this. That started with Windows 2000, which would not
format drives as FAT32 beyond a certain size.

Older Windows operating systems, Mac OS X, probably Linux and
specialized drive preparation tools can still produce FAT32 partitions
and will do so up to the limits of that particular file system.

Microsoft did not drop support for reading FAT32 formatted disks that
exceeded the capacity limits.

Seagate prepared the drive as FAT32 because a lot of operating systems
can both read and write to that format. Anything else is nowhere near
as flexible.

William

"Al" <> wrote in message
news:nB0gk.702$2...
>
> I just read the vista help file and it says "you cannot create a partition
> larger than 32GB using FAT32, so use NTFS". The strange thing is, I just
> installed a Seagate external drive which was preformatted and it has a
> FAT32 FS with 298GB of free space. Could someone please tell me what's
> going on here?

As others have said Windows Disk Management will not put the FAT32 file
system on drives greater than 32GB. Maybe because Fat32 wastes so much space
on very large single partitions. Not so important now that drives are so
cheap.
Seagate provide a tool to do the job called DiskWizard by Acronis.
http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...i=&p_topview=1

http://tinyurl.com/6j464b

On 19 Jul, 02:08, "Fred" <blu...@gaymail.com> wrote:
> "Al" <jhuguyt...@nbytfftetry.com> wrote in message
>
> news:nB0gk.702$2...
>
>
>
> > I just read the vista help file and it says "you cannot create a partition
> > larger than 32GB using FAT32, so use NTFS". The strange thing is, I just
> > installed a Seagate external drive which was preformatted and it has a
> > FAT32 FS with 298GB of free space. Could someone please tell me what's
> > going on here?
>
> As others have said Windows Disk Management will not put the FAT32 file
> system on drives greater than 32GB. Maybe because Fat32 wastes so much space
> on very large single partitions. Not so important now that drives are so
> cheap.
> Seagate provide a tool to do the job called DiskWizard by Acronis.http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...user/std_adp.p...
>
> http://tinyurl.com/6j464b

Thats handy as a lot of NAS enclosures will only work with a drive
formatted to FAT32
Trevor Smith

It is likely the Seagate utility mentioned later will ONLY work on
their drives. The infamous WinMe can create very large Fat32 volumes.
It shouldnt be too hard to find WinMe boot disk, perhaps bootdisk.com
?
Alternately, possibly Partition Magic should do the job.

My faith in Partiton Magic was recently shaken when it was unable to
set up NTFS partion on old 1.8 GB HDD. Several attempts failed after
many hours of processing. Resorted to Fdisk on XP & worked liked a
charm. This is the first issue I have ever had with Partition magic
wich routinely finds errors when a HDD is patitioned with Fdisk.

Any ideas, from the braintrust here ?
(All drives are IDE)

Thanks

------------------------------------------------


Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:08:35 +0100, "Al" <>
wrote:

>
>I just read the vista help file and it says "you cannot create a partition
>larger than 32GB using FAT32, so use NTFS". The strange thing is, I just
>installed a Seagate external drive which was preformatted and it has a FAT32
>FS with 298GB of free space. Could someone please tell me what's going on
>here?
>
>Cheers.

"gg" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> It is likely the Seagate utility mentioned later will ONLY work on
> their drives. The infamous WinMe can create very large Fat32 volumes.
> It shouldnt be too hard to find WinMe boot disk, perhaps bootdisk.com
> ?
> Alternately, possibly Partition Magic should do the job.
>
> My faith in Partiton Magic was recently shaken when it was unable to
> set up NTFS partion on old 1.8 GB HDD. Several attempts failed after
> many hours of processing. Resorted to Fdisk on XP & worked liked a
> charm. This is the first issue I have ever had with Partition magic
> wich routinely finds errors when a HDD is patitioned with Fdisk.
>
> Any ideas, from the braintrust here ?
> (All drives are IDE)
>
> Thanks
>


Got nuthin' man. Since the NT4.0 media isn't bootable w/o floppy, you're
stuck with either a W2K or XP CD.

Maybe someone's written a utility out there, but ....

I'm avoiding asking why you'd bother with a 1.8GB hard disk in the first
place. I'm sure you have good reason.