Discussion on:

Format FAT32 drives beyond 32GB limit

Do you still find yourself formatting drives with the FAT32 file system? Do you need to format drives past the 32GB limit? What tools do you use for these formatting tasks?

For my personal use, instead of using slow online backup/sync utilities, I bought a Seagate GoFlex 640 GB drive. I have the first 32 GB formatted as FAT32 and the rest as NTFS. I do this so that I can copy MP3 files to an old PC that I have at home that I basically use as a home stereo - has excellent speakers and subwoofers attached (runs Windows Me, and is usually quite stable!) I tried to install a utility that would allow it to read NTFS files on my system, but that just crashed it (some kind of pseudo NT kernel that would allow me to read the NTFS files, from Sysinternals.) What I would like is an easy utility to expand my FAT32 partition slightly, from 32 GB to about 64 GB. That would allow me to hold more songs than I or my friends possess! A utility like Partition Magic -- it worked so well, until Symantec discontinued it! I downloaded Partition Wizard, but I'm not sure that I want to try it on my drive.

You should give Parted Magic a spin! It's a freeware, Linux-based clone of PartitionMagic and I like using it.

http://partedmagic.com

This has what to do with going over 32GB for FAT32?

gmichaels mentioned that he misses Partition Magic, and I just wanted to steer him along to a free alternative. That's all.

This was a timely article as I just set up a spare system to use to recover data from hard drives. I put a spare 500GB hard drive in and I wanted to format the entire drive as FAT-32. I tried using Partition Magic and it only does FAT-32 out to about 160GB. You can create multiple 160GB partitions and then merge them, but you have to assign a folder to the other partitions on the first one. Cumbersome. I used to keep a Win 98 machine around to format larger FAT-32 drives, but that is also cumbersome. This utility is great and worked well for me. I need the drive as FAT-32 so I can access it if I have to boot to DOS to do the recovery. I'm still pissed at MS for arbitrarily limiting my ability to use FAT-32 as I see the need. I'm well aware of the benefits of NTFS and that is my standard on Win systems. I don't need MS to protect me from myself. They can easily add a message box explaining the benefits of NTFS over FAT-32 if one tries to use it.

I, too forgot about the HP utility mentioned below.

Matt, thanks for the info -- I'll check it out. Although, having to boot an OS seems a bit too much.

Something about maximum file table (and cluster) size.

But I read the wiki and it looks like the actual limit is two terabytes. Is this true?

The two terabyte limit on FAT32 you mentioned is for the overall partition size. Individual files are limited to 4 GB a piece. The 32 GB limit was set by Microsoft as a means to force people onto NTFS... Not because there was any real limitation beyond 32 GB partition sizes. Hope that clears that up for you.

I suppose it's the same for computer memory.Some kind of thing file system in that box.

The HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool will also format past 32GB.

I'm not sure if I'd trust something that could be considered non-standard when it comes to the Windows file system. Remember those utilities in the old days [even MS had one] that theoretically could double your disk space by tinkering around? Many had issues trying to undo things after newer versions of Windows wouldn't support the software.
What I find rediculous is that some camera manufacturers [such as Canon] still have a FAT [not FAT32] formst the SD cards for some of their cameras. At 1080P, you can't get more than 5 minutes of video.

I have a Mac with dual boot into Windows. I created a 3rd partition of 300GB using FAT32 using Mac's Disk Utility for storing documents and media files so that it can be shared by both MacOS and Windows on my 1st and 2nd partition.

Hi guys just found myself reading through your opinions regarding the topic. Im not that much of an expert regarding hardware so i found it interesting to post my own questions here.. Ive tried other ways as well to format my spare 320gb SATA from an old notebook. finally partition magic 7 worked perfectly. i wanted to use it to save downloaded video files so that i can play them on my portable dvd player. i got the video formats right coz i also save a copy on my 1gb thumb drive that would only allow a 1 hour length video. Sorry for the long explanation. Now my problem is, although i have the exact same copy on my SATA as the one on my thumb drive, everytime i connect my HD to the player it reads it but shows that drive is empty.
Any ideas as to why this is happening? I mean coz it reads the drive it just doesn't show the files... Thanks in advanced guys.

Download and Install the FAT 32 file format. It is a windows application designed to format drives larger than 32 GB.

The limit on fat32 can be resolved by some utility such as this partitioning software. you can create, format, resize and delete the parition. Totally free for

home users. Download free here.
http://www.fat-32-formatter.com/?trblo