Formatting fat32?

[btcomm1]

It's been so long I forgot, if you use a dos boot disk, or a cd and you use the format command does it format the disc in fat16 or fat32 or does it give you a choice? I guess probrably the easiest way is to boot off of an xp cd and format it that way.

 

[John]

Using a 98/ME bootdiskette will allow you to fdisk and format using FAT32. XP will not format w/ FAT32 if the drive is larger than 32GB. INstead you should use a Win98/ME bootdisk to do it. Is there a particular reason why you don't want to use NTFS?

 

[btcomm1]

Yes, this computer I am working on has windows ME on it. hehe I know ME sucks but the person doesn't want to pay 200 bucks to buy XP for a computer they aren't going to keep much longer. When you use fdisk, do you just create partitions or can you specifiy fat32 in there? Also if you don't specify in fdisk, is there a specific switch in the format command to specify fat32?

 

[Bozo Galora]

How to Prepare the Hard Disk for the Windows 98 Installation Procedure
WARNING: The following information applies to preparing an empty hard disk for the installation of Windows 98. If you use the following steps on a hard disk that is not empty, all of the data that is on that hard disk is deleted.

Before you install Windows 98 on an empty hard disk, you must first create a primary partition and then format a file system on that partition. Each allocated space on the hard disk (primary partition or logical drive) is assigned a drive letter. Windows 98 supports the FAT16 and FAT32 file systems. When you run the Fdisk tool on a hard disk that is larger than 512 MB, you are prompted to choose a file system.

The FAT16 file system has a maximum of 2 gigabytes (GB) for each allocated space, or drive letter. For example, if you use the FAT16 file system and you have a 6-GB hard disk, you can have three drive letters (C, D, and E), each with 2 GB of allocated space.

The FAT32 file system supports drives up to 2 terabytes in size and stores files on smaller sections of the hard disk than does the FAT16 file system. This results in more free space on the hard disk. The FAT32 file system does not support drives that are smaller than 512 MB. For additional information about the FAT32 file system, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

4. If the hard disk is larger than 512 MB, you receive the following prompt:
Your computer has a disk larger than 512 MB. This version of Windows includes improved support for large disks, resulting in more efficient use of disk space on large drives, and allowing disks over 2 GB to be formatted as a single drive.

IMPORTANT: If you enable large disk support and create any new drives on this disk, you will not be able to access the new drive(s) using other operating systems, including some versions of Windows 95 and Windows NT, as well as earlier versions of Windows and MS-DOS. In addition, disk utilities that were not designated explicitly for the FAT32 file system will not be able to work with this disk. If you need to access this disk with other operating systems or older disk utilities, do no enable large drive support.

Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N)?
If you want to use the FAT32 file system, press Y, and then press ENTER. If you want to use the FAT16 file system, press N, and then press ENTER.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221829

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327202