FAT32 Formatting limits?

Ahmed_B · #1 July 8, 2007, 10:11 AM

I've just hit a dead end today while trying to manage a 160 GB hard drive. I made 5 partitions in the Drive and two of which were 40 GB each. And when I tried to format those two in FAT32.. it only gave me the NTFS option.

AFAIK.... FAT has a maximum limit upto 32 GB drives. Anyone knows how I can format those 40 GB partitions in FAT32 format?

OR... can there be any problem in future if i format those two 40 GB partitions in NTFS while my system drive is in FAT32 itself?

Suggestions pls!

Kabir · #2 July 8, 2007, 10:22 AM

The only suggestion I have: take it to the computer doctor.

Ahmed_B · #3 July 8, 2007, 10:30 AM

And all these days I thought you were one of the doctors!

Kabir · #4 July 8, 2007, 10:32 AM

Emm, not in the technical part of hardware. That's an area I never wanted to touch, and have been successful in not touching. Believe it or not, even at this age I haven't taken the time to sit and assemble a computer from scratch...just doesn't interest me so much.

Btw, there's a difference b/w doctor and scientist

**Zunaid** · #5 July 8, 2007, 10:43 AM

Why would you need to format them in FAT32 and not NTFS. The Windows version of FAT32 formatter is clipped in that you can only format a max of 32G drive.

In theory, this should support a total of approximately 268,435,456 (2²⁸) clusters, allowing for drive sizes in the range of 8 terabytes with 32K clusters (wiki).

I believe third party FAT32 formatters are around that lets you exceed the artificial Windows limit.

Shafin · #6 July 8, 2007, 12:18 PM

There should not be any problems,I ran a similar setup with a FAT 32 C: drive and other NTFS drives,have not had any problems.

**Nasif** · #7 July 23, 2007, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ahmed_B
I've just hit a dead end today while trying to manage a 160 GB hard drive. I made 5 partitions in the Drive and two of which were 40 GB each. And when I tried to format those two in FAT32.. it only gave me the NTFS option.

AFAIK.... FAT has a maximum limit upto 32 GB drives. Anyone knows how I can format those 40 GB partitions in FAT32 format?

OR... can there be any problem in future if i format those two 40 GB partitions in NTFS while my system drive is in FAT32 itself?

Suggestions pls!

First of all get PartitionMagic or other similar partition programs. Forget about MS fdisk. FAT32 limit is approx: 2terabytes, win98 has a limit of ~130gb for FAT32. 40GB is no issue for FAT32.

Rubu · #8 July 24, 2007, 07:37 AM

You can have different drives with different formating and that is not an issue for windows, but I'm interested to know why you want FAT32 as it actually has many disadvantages over NTFS

Ahmed_B · #9 July 24, 2007, 09:08 AM

Wel.. its nothing I guess. I just havn't got used to putting my system in NTFS yet. Maybe I wil now.

cricket_dorshok · #10 July 24, 2007, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rubu
You can have different drives with different formating and that is not an issue for windows, but I'm interested to know why you want FAT32 as it actually has many disadvantages over NTFS

As I wrote in Password recovery thread, I also need to format a 57 GB drive from NTFS to FAT32. and couldn't. I need to store my Linux datas to Windows partition so that I can use them using both Windows and Linux.

**Nasif** · #11 July 24, 2007, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cricket_dorshok
As I wrote in Password recovery thread, I also need to format a 57 GB drive from NTFS to FAT32. and couldn't. I need to store my Linux datas to Windows partition so that I can use them using both Windows and Linux.

Linux can write to NTFS perfectly fine. Some distros have it disabled, you can change that. Ubuntu has it enabled by default. No need to run after FAT32.

If you want to go other way, ie that is reading ext2/3 file system in windows then there is Windows ext2/3 driver at: http://www.fs-driver.org/. Works great, I use it.