FAT

No... I'm not referring to your size or weight. File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system created by M$ in 1977 and is the predecessor of New Technology File System (NTFS). FAT is still commonly used on storage devices (eg. memory cards, external drives) because Mac OS X does not recognise NTFS.
This is the very reason that I wanted to reformat my external drive as FAT32. Hmmmmm... strange??? No FAT32 option? Aaaaaah... turns out that one of the limitations of FAT32 is that it can't be used on partitions larger than 32GB Windows OSs (after Windows 2000) have a built-in mechanism that prevents users from formatting drives/partitions larger than 32GB in FAT32 format. Mystery solved! That's what the 32 implies. I divided the drive into 2 partitions.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Not true, perfectly possible to format in Fat32 if the partition is larger. Did it with my external 120GB HDD. You need a little program though to do this, can find it for you if you want.
3/18/2009 1:15 pm
nephos said…
Send me the name!!! Open source?
3/18/2009 1:17 pm
Anonymous said…
Found it:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/FAT32format.shtml
3/18/2009 1:19 pm
nephos said…
Thanks for the tip. I found an article on this topic. Turns out you don't need a third party tool. The workaround is using the format command from command prompt to force FAT32 format on a drive larger than 32GB.
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/formatting-external-hard-drive-to-fat-32/
3/18/2009 1:28 pm
Anonymous said…
Tried that, didn't work for me. Still got the message that the volume was too large.
3/18/2009 1:58 pm
nephos said…
Ah... I'm keeping my drive as 2 partitions. Can't be bothered to change it as it might have some performance implications if I force FAT32 on the drive.
3/18/2009 2:08 pm
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