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Converting FAT32 to FAT16?

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by galahad04

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I currently have a computer that I am considering upgrading to Windows XP when it is released. Presently, it is equipped with Windows 98 SE and is running on a FAT32 partition. The thing is, since XP will not be supporting FAT32 but only FAT16, how do I convert the files to FAT16? For example, would it be sufficient to copy the files via floppy to another computer with a FAT16 partition to keep them FAT16-compatible?

5 replies

by computechie

I'm running Beta 2 of Windows XP, and it's on a FAT32 drive and works fine. In fact I beleive the final release is going to use FAT64. FAT16 is inneficient when it comes to storing files, so I'd stick with FAT32. If you really do want to convert back to FAT16, you'll either need to reformat and choose not to enable large disk support, or use a third party utility such as Partition Magic 5, it can format a drive back and forth from several types of formats. Good luck.

by galahad04

Hey there Computertechie,

Thanks for the info about FAT32 XP compatibility. However I read somewhere that NTFS, which XP uses, does not support FAT32 file systems. Since as you mentioned this is not a problem with your XP beta version, is it possible that FAT32 is incompatible only on computers running NT 4.0 but not XP? Thanks

by galahad04

Actually please ignore my previous question above about NT 4.0...I browsed the original source again (a TechRepublic article), and discovered that FAT32 is compatible with Win 95 OSR2, Win 98, Win2K, and Win Me only. Again, thanks very much for your timely solution!

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