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WinXP Pro will not let me use FAT

C

crazychicken

Platinum Member
I installed this about three times, and the first two i had 4 options, FAT, FAT fast, NTFS, and NTFS fast. Recently when i reinstalled it, i only had the NTFS and NTFS fast. I asked my friend and he said he was having the same problem.

any ideas?

thanks

david

An interesting discussion, yes, I'm sure, but what does this have to do with hardware?

AnandTech Moderator
 
Are you talking about after you install the OS or in installation because if you have already installed the os and trying to format a partition, it is because the partition is too big, I had the same problem... I formatted a 40 gig and 25 gig partions ... 40 for games and 25 for appz... but since 40 gigs was too big for fat, i dont know why... i had to format the 25 gig with fat for games... i think if your partition is more that 30 gigs or somewhere around there.. you can not format in fat32.. this is an opinion.. im not sure..
 
You wouldn't want a FAT partition anyway. FAT32 maybe. If you want a FAT32 partition, you have to get a hold of a utility such as the fdisk utility which can be found easily.
 
Win XP only allows a maximum of 32GB FAT32 partition. Microsoft is looking to remove FAT32 from its OSes since it sucks as a filesystem and no self respecting computer user should be using it. I believe all of this information is in one of the NTFS or FAT32 FAQs. Please give them a read. And unless you need to dualboot with DOS, there is absolutely no reason to use such a crappy FS.
 
If the HDD is larger than 32GB I do believe your only option is NTFS during Windows XP setup.
 
I could've sworn that I had a 40GB Western Digital HD FAT32ed and installed WinMe on it last summer... but I could've been messed up or something so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

EDIT: last summer... the memories. Just 1 more college summer left...
 


<< I could've sworn that I had a 40GB Western Digital HD FAT32ed and installed WinMe on it last summer... but I could've been messed up or something so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

EDIT: last summer... the memories. Just 1 more college summer left... >>



WinME is not WinXP/2k. You can do it in WinME, just not in XP (and maybe not 2k).
 
Windows XP can't create a FAT32 partition bigger than 32 GB, however it can inherit such a partition from previous MS OS. So whip out that fdisk and make a 40 GB FAT32 partition and Win XP will install on that. However, I'm not sure why you want to use FAT32 as it sucks compared to NTFS so if I was in your position I would think twice before using FAT32
 
If you install XP with NTFS it will not have the FAT32
format selection [after you finish with your installation]

you can always format your additional HD with win98 bootdisk

but if you install win xp with FAT32 format you will have it in there.

I dunno what the reason Microsoft make it that way.
 


<< I have a question. If you use NTFS, can you share files with somebody who's using FAT32? >>




Over a network, yes, because filesystem really dosen't matter in this case.
 
The only reason I would want to use FAT32 is for Ghost backups since I don't have a burner. I wish Norton would make it so that you could save a backup image file on an NTFS partition. I like NTFS better though.
 
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