reformatting USB External hard drive (FAT32-->NFTS)

[cbn]

I have read some newegg reviews on the Buffalo external hard drives and some users have been making complaints that these are formatted in something called FAT32?

What is FAT32? And how do I reformat the drive to NTFS? Does my OS do this automatically? Or do I have to do this manually?

Thanks.

 

[taltamir]

plug it in, right click on the drive that shows up and select "format", check the box that says "quick format", then choose NTFS and start it.

FAT32 is an older filesystem than NTFS, it has less bugs (although NTFS bugs are rare), many more drive tools work with it, but is more likely to lose data on power loss, is limited to less characters, fewer directories, less files, and so on. FAT32 is also supported on many more OSes than NTFS (which is windows XP and vista and non natively on some later versions of linux... no mac support).

you can read up on those two in detail in wikipedia.

typically external drives come with FAT32 because the manufacturer doesn't know if you are going to use a mac, windows, older version of windows, or other os. But it is easy as pie to switch. If you don't plan to use anything other than winXP and winVista than go ahead and change it to NTFS

 

[Nothinman]

plug it in, right click on the drive that shows up and select "format", check the box that says "quick format", then choose NTFS and start it.

Or use convert from the cli to convert it without losing any data, but if the drive is just out of the box and empty the net result will be the same as a format.

 

[Lorne]

Theres also the issue where removable USB devices formatted in NTFS have been known to corrupt when disconnected, eg was when you could format pendrives in NTFS on XP-SP1 but the SP2 removed that option but CONVERT still worked.
FAT32 alows for both compatabillity with other OS's and to avoid the corruption all together.

I still format or convert all my drives to NTFS.

 

[Nothinman]

FAT32 alows for both compatabillity with other OS's and to avoid the corruption all together.

No, FAT isn't immune to that, any filesystem with write caching can lose data if you pull the cable before flushing the cache.

 

[taltamir]

mmm... fat is more susceptible to FILE corruption on power loss due to lack of journaling... but would the NTFS file SYSTEM corrupt losing ALL data on the drive when pulled? I haven't heard that one before, is this what you are saying lorne or are you saying a FILE will corrupt.

 

[Nizology]

Originally posted by: Just learning
I have read some newegg reviews on the Buffalo external hard drives and some users have been making complaints that these are formatted in something called FAT32?

What is FAT32? And how do I reformat the drive to NTFS? Does my OS do this automatically? Or do I have to do this manually?

Thanks.

The FAT32 system also limits the max single file size to 4gb. This is the main reason why I need to format my passport to NTFS.