Format large drives as FAT32 tutorial

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cybersect [clone of Skeptik]

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ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/h2format.zip

I used this personally to create a 320GB Fat32 Drive on XP. Follow these instructions carefully:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted...-formatting-large-hard-drives-32gb-fat32.html

When you plug in the drive it might take about 20 seconds to pick up, but hey you have your FAT32. Use it for your multimedia on you DIVX players, PS3 etc

Enjoy, friends of earth.

1. Install the HD inside of the enclosure.
2. Hook it up to your USB 2.0(preferably) or USB 1.1 port.
3. If you are running Win2K or WinXP, the enclosure will be auto-detected and install the correct USB Mass Storage driver automatically. If you are using WinME or 98SE, you will have to install drivers off of the bundled install CD.
4. Right click the "My Computer" icon and select "Manage.."
5. Click on "Disk Management" in the left panel.
6. (Sorry, I am going from memory here... so the actual terms may differ slightly) Find your new drive in the right window and right click on it's bar, then choose "Create Partition".
7. Create one Primary Partition that is of the FAT32 flavor at it's maximum size. (DO NOT USE NTFS.. IT WILL NOT WORK)
8. A window will pop up asking you if you want to format it... Choose "Do not format at this time". The reason for this is that Win2K and WinXP will not let you format a FAT32 drive any larger than 32GB. If you are using Win98, you can simply format a FAT32 drive without any problems. My 2K & XP workaround for this problem took a bit of research.
9. Once the partition is created and it says "Healthy", Right click it and set it to be "Active".
10. Close out of the Computer Management Control panel.
11. Download H2Format (it is freeware).
12. Unzip the file and copy the H2Format.exe file to the root of your C drive.
13. From the Start menu select "Run..." and type in "cmd" then press Enter.
14. Your DOS prompt should read "C:\>". If not, type in "c:" and Enter.
15. Then type in "H2Format H:" (Substitute your drive letter for H if it is different).
16. In a couple of seconds, it will format your drive to it's full capacity as a FAT32 drive.
Click to expand...
 
teraside said:
Too much of a mission in my opinion.

This application is free and can format drives up to 2TB in FAT32. Formatted a 500GB drive last week in less than 2 minutes.

http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm
Click to expand...

I was never able to get Swiss Knife to work on any drive larger than 500 Gb.

So I used this command line tool from RidgeCrop...

http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/FAT32format-Screenshot-79375.html

It formatted my 1 Terabyte drive to FAT32 in 3 seconds.
 
pop.con said:
why do you guys still use FAT 32?
Click to expand...

Requirement for most DIVX External HDD Players etc. and some systems in use today still rely on FAT32 as well.

For instance, we've got a Linux box here, but the backup drive attached to it needs to be FAT32.
 
pop.con said:
why do you guys still use FAT 32?
Click to expand...

Not by choice... if you want to use your PS3 as a media server you are stuck with FAT32.

It's because the license fees for NTFS are exorbitant. More manufacturers would use the NTFS technology if it was reasonably priced.
 
Xbox 360 also will only let you use FAT32. I used a tool called fat32format.exe and it worked.
 
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