coverting a hard disk from NFTS to FAT32

Our man in Havana

Is it a big job to convert a hard disk from NTFS to FAT 32?

MunsterCycling

iirc its lose all your data and reinstall kind of big job!

Ruu_Old

Afraid its not an easy job. You'll have to delete and then re-create the partition. Partition Magic might do the job for you but you risk losing it all, so backup if you are going to try that. Otherwise Format, create partition in DOS and re-install (if installing XP select to leave the partition in its current format)

Our man in Havana

Its a usb external drive if that makes any difference?

28064212

It's not particularly difficult, provided you don't care about losing your data. Just format the drive completely, then you can reformat it to whatever you want. As a matter of interest, why do you want to do it?

Our man in Havana

It is due to policy issues on PC's at work. It will not allow me to write to a NFTS disk so I am going to see if a FAT32 disk will work.
The pc is treating the disk as a fixed disk, I am hoping that FAT32 will be seen as a removable disk, which there are no issues.

USB Keys work ok and they are FAT32.

Our man in Havana

Problem: When I go to format I do not have the option of FAT32. The drop down box says NFTS only. Is there a way to format FAT32 via the DOS prompt?

Orion

Assuming that you're in 2000 or XP. You need to go to Administrative Tools in the control panel and then to Disk Administrator. Remove the partitions on the hard disk completely (make sure that you're deleting from the correct disk). Then create a new FAT partition and format that.

HelterSkelter

Bond-007 wrote:

Problem: When I go to format I do not have the option of FAT32. The drop down box says NFTS only. Is there a way to format FAT32 via the DOS prompt?

If you have a windows 95/98 boot disk, boot from it and you can format FAT32.

zerodown

There are 2 ways:

1. Use a 98 boot disk and run fdisk to delete current partitions.
Available here http://www.msu-hb.de/download/boot98se.exe


2. Boot from windows xp disk and select new installation, format disk as Fat32 full not quick and that will do the same job.

Note: You will lose all files unless there on a separate partition or external device.

Sean^DCT4

Bond-007 wrote:

Problem: When I go to format I do not have the option of FAT32. The drop down box says NFTS only. Is there a way to format FAT32 via the DOS prompt?

Answering your question....

Yes the command from a DOS-box under Windows XP is

format DRIVE /FS:FAT32 /V:HDLabel /X

Our man in Havana

Sean^DCT4 wrote:

Answering your question....

Yes the command from a DOS-box under Windows XP is

format DRIVE /FS:FAT32 /V:HDLabel /X

Thanks. The problem now is that the disk is too big for FAT32. Is there a way to create a partition under DOS so that the partitions will be small enough to format as FAT32? The total size of the drive is 40gig and USB.

Is there a way to create partitions and convert to FAT32 under DOS?

zerodown

did you enable large disk support while partitioning?

Yes you can split your disk into 2 partitions. One for the operating system and other for files. This is done using Fdisk in dos.

Firstly delete all partitions on disk, boot from dos from floppy. Run Fdisk and create a primary partition. Select half 50% or about 20400mb in your case. Repeat this and you have two 20's. Then FAT32 will work

gamer

Make 3 partitions, you can get win98se bootdisk from bootdisk.com, download it to a floppy,it has built in universal cdrom drivers ,it has fdisk format commands ,try 25 gig for partition 0,first part.I think theres a 32gig limit,not sure to be honest.

Sean^DCT4

Bond-007 wrote:

Thanks. The problem now is that the disk is too big for FAT32. Is there a way to create a partition under DOS so that the partitions will be small enough to format as FAT32? The total size of the drive is 40gig and USB.

Is there a way to create partitions and convert to FAT32 under DOS?

http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/

Prezatch

*bump

Just wondering if there is anyway of converting from Fat32 to NTFS without loosing data. My lappy came with the hard drive partitioned, both parts with Fat32, but I didn't notice this until recently, now its full of data .Running Windows XP home

Cheers

Explosive_Cornflake

Bond-007 wrote:

It is due to policy issues on PC's at work. It will not allow me to write to a NFTS disk so I am going to see if a FAT32 disk will work.
The pc is treating the disk as a fixed disk, I am hoping that FAT32 will be seen as a removable disk, which there are no issues.

USB Keys work ok and they are FAT32.

Converting it to fat32 won't fix your problem. It'll still show up as a HD, and not removable storage. Even an ext2 drive I use with a kernel mode driver shows up as a hard drive.
It's to do with what windows and the usb controller think it to be.

JoeyD wrote:

Just wondering if there is anyway of converting from Fat32 to NTFS without loosing data. My lappy came with the hard drive partitioned, both parts with Fat32, but I didn't notice this until recently, now its full of data .Running Windows XP home

Window has a built in utility for this, convert.exe, but afaik, it uses the cluster size that the fat32 partition was created in, most likely 32k, and not what it should be for ntfs, most like 4k

Edit: I had the quote tags wrong, so what I was saying was confusing.

_CreeD_

I know some of this eventually got stated but since this was dragged up from the past I figured it might save some folks a bit of time.

1. You don't need to delete partitions (face mecca, dip one foot in yoghurt or most of the other more colourful stuff above). You simply format as FAT32 from Explorer or the cmd prompt - Disk management in XP only allows formatting as NTFS, Msofts way of pushing people to use it, Explorer and CMD don't have the limitation.
2. 2K/XP/2K3 limit Fat32 Partitions to 32Gb, Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98 did not. If you previously formatted a larger partition as FAT32 2K/Xp/2K3 will read from it fine. You can repartition in Disk management or using FDISK under Dos.
3. If a policy was in the way of writing to a removable drive then the File System will have no effect.
4. To convert from FAT16/32 to NTFS use "CONVERT (drive) /FS:NTFS" from a command prompt. If it's your Boot partition it will ask if you want to schedule the conversion for the next reboot, just say Yes. You won't lose any data.

Orion

JoeyD wrote:

*bump

Just wondering if there is anyway of converting from Fat32 to NTFS without loosing data. My lappy came with the hard drive partitioned, both parts with Fat32, but I didn't notice this until recently, now its full of data .Running Windows XP home

Cheers

Yes.

Convert X: /FS:NTFS

That will convert drive X from FAT32 to NTFS.

Zapho

I would never recommend anyone use Fat32 for a drive bigger than 40gb, it was never designed for them as is totally inefficient, so if you can avoid converting back from NTFS then do!

On saying that FAT32 will work on large drives, but its really not worth it!

EDIT: Ok just saw that the OP's drive is actually 40gb. Anyway like it was previously said changing your file system probably won't fix your problem. Windows has different drivers for flash drives and usb harddisks and will treat them differently.

Prezatch

Thanks a mill for the replies

Our man in Havana

Just to conclude, changing the disk to FAT32 worked and I can now write to it nps.