Portable hard drive Formatting

[Wasp_21]

Hey all,

Need some guidance on a portable hard drive. A mate got one, but he bought FAT32 500G HD, now he sees the error of his choice, as he is mostly wanting to use it for MKV storage. Can one simply format it to NTFS, or does one need a specific program? Thanks

 

[Veroland]

Windows should be able to format it NTFS no problem, if not, there is a range of free programs out there

 

[SilverNodashi]

NTFS is fine, as long as the other device / PC can read it

i.e. if he wants to put it into a portable media player then you need to make sure the portable media player can read NTFS. If it's just a portable HDD with a USB cable then NTFS should be fine

 

[Conradl]

You can convert FAT32 to NTFS with windows, without formatting, if you want to preserve your data:

convert <drive letter>: /fs:ntfs from a command prompt

 

[Juggy]

Or download Swissknife to do it for you...

 

[Wasp_21]

Thanks chaps for the info. It's just a portable, nothing fancy, so should be easy then. Thanks again.

 

[GforceD]

You can convert FAT32 to NTFS with windows, without formatting, if you want to preserve your data:

convert <drive letter>: /fs:ntfs from a command prompt

Yup did this on a 1.5 TB and a 1TB works great and if you already got stuff on the drive you don't have to move it off.

Just remember FAT32 file size limit is 2Gigs so NTFS is a must if you got files bigger than that.