up vote 1 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I have just tried to change the format a 1tb NTFS drive to fat32 and I'm getting a message that the drive's too big. Can anyone help?

link|improve this question
4  
Why would you want fat32 for anything these days? – Zoredache Nov 16 '11 at 21:25
3  
presumably compatibility. Some people seem to prefer fat32 for OS portable drives – Journeyman Geek Nov 16 '11 at 23:44
2  
Also useful for people transferring files between a Mac and PC, and don't want 3rd party software. Also supported by game consoles – Simon Sheehan Nov 17 '11 at 4:41
feedback

migrated from serverfault.com Nov 16 '11 at 21:22

This question came from our site for system administrators and desktop support professionals.

4 Answers

up vote 11 down vote

According to this technet article, the largest FAT32 volume that Windows can create is 32GB. There are other methods to make larger volumes, since the theoretical max is 2TB, but you'll find support for large FAT32 volumes to be sparse.

If you're using this on an external device, you might want to look at exFAT.

link|improve this answer
4  
Couple this with the fact that there's no reason to use FAT32 on a device this size. What, you're going to install Windows 95 on it? I don't think it'll recognize a partition that large anyway. :) – Shinrai Nov 16 '11 at 21:26
3  
The restriction is there because large FAT32 volumes slow down the computer. – kinokijuf Nov 16 '11 at 21:26
@kinokijuf I'd be interested to read documentation on how large un-fragmented FAT32 volumes slow down a system. Do you have a link to this assertion? – MDMarra Nov 16 '11 at 21:28
5  
@MarkM A Brief and Incomplete History of FAT32 „For a 32GB FAT32 drive, it takes 4 megabytes of disk I/O to compute the amount of free space” – kinokijuf Nov 16 '11 at 21:32
3  
@MarkM: Regardless of how much modern drives can handle, I see absolutely no reason to switch to a filesystem that is very inefficient, more limited, and less reliable in comparison. (FAT only handles files up to 4 GB in size. Its long file name support is a horrible hack. Directories are kept as a linear table rather than NTFS B+tree. I've already lost a filesystem after a single interrupted rename; NTFS would have repaired this without me even noticing.) – grawity Nov 16 '11 at 23:00
show 2 more comments
feedback
up vote 7 down vote

You can use the ridgecrop fat32 formatter to format the drive - bizzarely, while modern versions of windows cannot format large fat drives, they read them fine. The formatter is monumentally fast, so don't worry if it zips through the process.

If you don't want to read through all the juicy theory do a quick in page search for "fat32format binary ~20K"

link|improve this answer
1  
The restriction when formatting was added intentionally. – grawity Nov 17 '11 at 21:11
feedback
up vote 0 down vote

while I agree that there is no reason to use FAT32 anymore, I ran into this recently when connecting a hard drive to my Pioneer AVIC-Z130BT navigation. It only supports FAT32 much to my dismay. I got a portable 750GB drive and discovered through trial and error that I can't seem to get it to format any bigger than about 450GB. The utility was called fat32format, which is the same utility that Journeyman Geek mentioned. Google can point you to where you can pick up a copy for free.

link|improve this answer
Could you provide a link instead of suggesting google? The point of using this site is to not use google – Simon Sheehan Nov 17 '11 at 4:42
2  
the link i've given points at where you can get it for free. And if anyone charges you for it, you've been scammed. – Journeyman Geek Nov 17 '11 at 5:32
feedback
up vote 0 down vote

While you're using larger drives, obviously you will be using large files to work with. there are several limitations with FAT32 file system including the size of the files, size of the volume can be created. Later it will be hard to go back if you use FAT32. exFAT is an alternative but I am not sure how well it performs better than NTFS. NTFS is a mature file system and most of the operating system supports read and write (especially Linux). So I'd suggest you to stay-back with NTFS for better performance and reliability.

link|improve this answer
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard