Why cant I format in fat32?

[GoingUp]

I just got a new 200gb HD... my mobo does support it and Im running winxp.

I have 2 primary partitions and an extended parition with 3 paritions on it. My problem is that I want to format the partitions in fat32, but when I go to format the partition, I can only do so in NTFS. Any ideas at all? I am trying to make a new logical partition

 

[Viper GTS]

Read up

Bottom line:

You cannot format a volume larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size using the FAT32 file system during the Windows XP installation process. Windows XP can mount and support FAT32 volumes larger than 32 GB (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create a FAT32 volume larger than 32 GB by using the Format tool during Setup. If you need to format a volume that is larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system to format it. Another option is to start from a Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me) Startup disk and use the Format tool included on the disk.

Viper GTS

 

[GoingUp]

thanks

 

[Viper GTS]

My question for you, why would you want to use FAT32?

Viper GTS

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
My question for you, why would you want to use FAT32?

Viper GTS

Alternative OS write access?

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
My question for you, why would you want to use FAT32?

Viper GTS

Alternative OS write access?

My guess would be if that were the case he wouldn't be attempting to set it up using XP.

Viper GTS

 

[GoingUp]

So that I can see the drives in dos in case I need to do things. I also was setting up a partition so that I could ghost my HD to it. I just shrunk the partition size and everything works now. Thanks!

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS

My guess would be if that were the case he wouldn't be attempting to set it up using XP.

Viper GTS

Meh, that's what I did. I let XP create my 30GB FAT32 parition.

 

[THUGSROOK]

you can use a win98 bootdisk to make the partitions any size you want, then load winXP.

i use FAT32 on my 80gb drive

 

[bacillus]

hmm, you'll be wasting alot of hdd space using fat32 for your data as I suspect some of your partitions will be larger than 32,768 MB which means your cluster size would be 32 KB!

 

[THUGSROOK]

not really.

its parted 11.1gb (8kb) / 63.3gb (32kb).
but thats ok by me since my avg file size on D drive is 10mb, its not really wasting much space at all