[Sargasm]

I just got a 160 gb external hard drive, and it is encoded in FAT32. I hear NTFS is more reliable, faster read and write, etc, not to mention a bigger file size limit. How can I reformat my drive to NTFS, and is it even recommended?

[SpecMode]

NTFS is, IMHO, a better choice if you only intend to use the drive on a Windows system. However, if I'm not mistaken, Mac OS X can only read from NTFS volumes - it cannot write to them. (There may be a third-party solution, or this may have changed in a recent OS X update, but AFAIK it has not as of yet).

If you still want to format the drive as an NTFS volume, right-click the drive in a Windows Explorer window, select 'Format...', and under the 'File system' header select 'NTFS'. If it's not available, you may have to format the drive via the command line (can't remember the switch off the top of my head; give me a few minutes to look it up).

[chucker]

You're right, NTFS write support in non-Windows systems is very limited.

The best choice if you want a modern file system that reads and write anywhere is HFS+, although you need a commercial driver on Windows (preferably MacDrive).

Other than that, FAT32 is a good baseline and almost any system can fully handle it.

[ezkcdude]

Can you format a 250 GB drive using FAT32? I was told by our sysadmin that I would have to partition the drive into very small "chunks". Is that still true?

EDIT: Scratch that. I found a free DOS utility called fat32format that formatted my entire 250 GB drive as FAT32. Also, most importantly, the file allocation size is only 32K, which is small enough for me, especially since the disk will be mainly for music and image files. Hope that helps someone :smokey: . Here's the link:

fat32format

[Sketch]

well ezkcdude are you using mac or windows? because i have a 250 GB HDD and i formatted it using the disk utility function. When you plug your external HDD in, mac os automatically detects whether it is formatted or not... all you have to do is just type of format you want to do. Hope this helps.

[ezkcdude]

Thanks, iceman. Actually, now it's a moot point. I just partitioned the disk in Ubuntu and made one small (20 GB) linux partition and the rest FAT32 using mkfs. That actually reduced the file allocation size to only 16K, so maybe that's even a better way to do this.

[ShadowOfGed]

Originally Posted by ezkcdude Can you format a 250 GB drive using FAT32? I was told by our sysadmin that I would have to partition the drive into very small "chunks". Is that still true? EDIT: Scratch that. I found a free DOS utility called fat32format that formatted my entire 250 GB drive as FAT32. Also, most importantly, the file allocation size is only 32K, which is small enough for me, especially since the disk will be mainly for music and image files. Hope that helps someone :smokey: . Here's the link: fat32format

Your sysadmin is right in a sense. Since Windows 2000 (I believe), Microsoft has intentionally crippled their FAT32 formatters such that they fail to format anything larger than 32GB. It's more sinister than it sounds:

It doesn't just fail before it starts saying "sorry, I can't format a FAT32 partition bigger than 32GB" (actually, should read "I purposely choose not to format FAT32 partitions bigger than 32GB"). It will format and overwrite the first 32GB on that partition. Then it decides to fail. Bastards.

That said, I've used the linux "dosfstools" or "dosfsutils" to format my FAT32 partition (130GB) to share data between Linux and Windows. Phah, Microsoft. What a bunch of lame bastards.

[Barto]

Yeah, as long as you're running Linux or OS X you can format a big (up to 2TB IIRC) FAT32 partition. It's only Win2k/XP that you need to slice a drive into chunks when formatting.

Errata: Win2k/XP will read big FAT32 partitions without problems, it's only formatting that is restricted.

[ShadowOfGed]

Originally Posted by Barto Yeah, as long as you're running Linux or OS X you can format a big (up to 2TB IIRC) FAT32 partition. It's only Win2k/XP that you need to slice a drive into chunks.

Nah, Windows can use FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB, it just refuses to format new ones bigger than that. Because at Microsoft, the whole world uses Windows. Therefore, it's OK to strongarm everyone into using NTFS since most drives are larger than 32GB these days.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by ShadowOfGed Nah, Windows can use FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB, it just refuses to format new ones bigger than that.

That's precisely what Barto said.

[ShadowOfGed]

Originally Posted by chucker That's precisely what Barto said.

Whoops. I mistook the last part to imply that 2000/XP needed the sliced up because they also can't read partitions bigger than 32GB.

A little help here? I need an emoticon for foot-in-mouth!