Convert NTFS to FAT32

tom_ass19

Hey guys

Trying to find a program that will convert my external hdd from NFTS to FAT32. Bought a WD Elements 1.5tb today and want to plug it into my xbox. When I try to format using windows it only has exFAT but xbox will only work on FAT32.

Does anyone know of a program that will do that? Could you link it perhaps?

Sorry for being a noob ^^


Cheers,
Tom

Fysh

Your best bet is to download GParted, burn it to a CD and use that - connect up your WD drive, boot from the CD, and use the GUI to format the partition however you want it.

(It's a bit tedious that this can't be done natively in Vista/7 but that's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.

tom_ass19

Can it be done in xp an easier way? :P

Fysh

tom_ass19 wrote: »

Can it be done in xp an easier way? :P

XP should let you format a drive as FAT32 pretty easily - see here for instructions from Microsoft.

woolymammoth

in XP, you can right click on the drive in Explorer, format, then select your poison!

You need to be aware of the limitations of the FAT systems though. if you use FAT32, you will only be able to use a fraction of the 1.5TB drive, a massive waste unless you partition it.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2801/exfat_versus_fat32_versus_ntfs/

You'd be better off having a smaller drive dedicated to this task.

woolymammoth

sorry Tom, i missed a bit of your original post about windows not giving you the option!

try this;
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

should let you do whatever you want with the drive.

Fysh

woolymammoth wrote: »

in XP, you can right click on the drive in Explorer, format, then select your poison!

You need to be aware of the limitations of the FAT systems though. if you use FAT32, you will only be able to use a fraction of the 1.5TB drive, a massive waste unless you partition it.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2801/exfat_versus_fat32_versus_ntfs/

You'd be better off having a smaller drive dedicated to this task.

That's only if you try to use Windows to create the partition (see here for more info). This is not an issue if you use GParted to create the partition.

BaconZombie

If you don;t care about the files on the drive the best program to use is the " HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool " it's the easiest way of formatting a >32GB drive to FAT32.

I normally run this on all USB / SD disk to clean off all the crap they normal pre-install if I'm on a Windows box.

tom_ass19

Thanks for all the replies guys, i'm in work at the moment so i'll see what I can do when I get home tonight.

Haven't checked the links yet but i'm basically creating a partition on the drive in FAT32 format, how much would I be loosing? At the moment the drive is 1.36tb so i've lost a lot of gigs already, I know this happens but thought it was a bit harsh than previous hdd's i've purchased.

BaconZombie

That is the formatted size, basically:

In Windows ;
1024MB = 1GB
1024 GB = 1TB

The was HD makers count:

1000MB = 1GB
1000GB = 1TB

The HP tools will WIPE ALL data on the drive and remove the NTFS flag and reset it to FAT32 and then format it to FAT32.

Best to select the "Quick Wipe/Format" option.

tom_ass19 wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies guys, i'm in work at the moment so i'll see what I can do when I get home tonight.

Haven't checked the links yet but i'm basically creating a partition on the drive in FAT32 format, how much would I be loosing? At the moment the drive is 1.36tb so i've lost a lot of gigs already, I know this happens but thought it was a bit harsh than previous hdd's i've purchased.

Fysh

tom_ass19 wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies guys, i'm in work at the moment so i'll see what I can do when I get home tonight.

Haven't checked the links yet but i'm basically creating a partition on the drive in FAT32 format, how much would I be loosing? At the moment the drive is 1.36tb so i've lost a lot of gigs already, I know this happens but thought it was a bit harsh than previous hdd's i've purchased.

There's a difference between a 1.5TB drive showing as 1.36TB (which is a marketing thing based on advertising drives based on decimal numbers rather than their actual capacity based on binary numbers- ie 1.5TB as a decimal number is 1.5*1000*1000*1000*1000 whereas as a binary number it would be 1.5*1024*1024*1024*1024) and "losing space" due to using FAT32.

The built-in Windows disk manager has a quite small upper limit to the FAT32 partition size it lets you create (I think it's something like 127GB) so you wouldn't be able to use most of the space you've got. Using GParted or almost any other tool to create the partition would not have this problem - FAT32 partitions can be up to 2TB in size.

Edited to add: BaconZombie beat me to it. Blast!

tom_ass19

Thank you for the replies guys

I'll download that program when i'm home later on. So all I will be doing is creating a partition on the drive for around 1.36TB in FAT32 or there abouts and bobs my uncle?

Fysh

tom_ass19 wrote: »

Thank you for the replies guys

I'll download that program when i'm home later on. So all I will be doing is creating a partition on the drive for around 1.36TB in FAT32 or there abouts and bobs my uncle?

Yep. Basically you boot from the CD - it'll ask you a few questions while it starts up, but just stick to whatever options are given as defaults. There's a video tutorial here that goes through how to use GParted.

tom_ass19

Nice one, really appreciate all the help i've got. I'll let ye know if I fail at it later on :P If I do then you can spam me with noob

The maximum size that 2000 or XP will let you format a FAT32 drive is 32GB (the default upper limit of a 16kb cluster size on FAT32). Third party tools like GParted or fat32format allow up to 2TB in theory.