Formatting over 32GB into FAT32?

[pokemon]

I have a 250GB IDE Hard Drive and need to format it as a FAT32 drive. Could I partition it into like 30GB and 220GB, the 30 being formatted to FAT32 and the 220 being formatted to NTFS? Windows XP can read both NTFS and FAT32 if they are on the same hard drive, right? Thanks.

 

[hergieburbur]

yeah, though i think the upper limit of FAT32 us actually 20GB. Don't kill me if I'm wrong, its been awhile since I have used FAT32.

 

[pokemon]

But I can partition two seperate FAT32 and NTFS sizes correct? (20GB should be fine)

I heard 32GB is the limit through XP and 80GB is the most I've heard with Partition Magic. But I could be misinformed.

 

[pscowboy]

FAT 32 can read 137g with advanced BIOS's.

Its' cluster size will be 32k (versus NTFS @ 4k).

When you get to the Partitioning and Formatting phase of your install, make very sure that you do the FAT 32, 30g size first. I am assuming you want that as your boot "C" drive?

Then partition the rest, and format as NTFS.

Now the install will want to know which partition to put XP on. Careful.

 

[pokemon]

I'm not going to be putting any OS on here. It is for an external hard drive. The FAT32 is for my XBOX360 and the NTFS is for my normal movies and music. I need it so I can put the emulators necessary for backwards compatability with the original Xbox games.

 

[pscowboy]

Then set this drive up with your XP cd and STOP after all the formatting is done and put it into your enclosure.

 

[hergieburbur]

Then set this drive up with your XP cd and STOP after all the formatting is done and put it into your enclosure.

If you are using this for an external drive, Don't use the XP CD, use the Disk Management tool in Computer Mangement. its a cleaner way to do it.

 

[apache_lives]

patition magic - iv done an 80gb in FAT32 with patition magic and it seems to work fine.

 

[bourgeoisdude]

FAT32 can theoretically reach 4TB in size, though nobody would want over 137GB due to the even worse cluster size of 64KB. Use this guide:

513MB-8GB partition: 4KB clusters
8GB-16GB partition: 8KB clusters
16GB-32GB partition: 16KB clusters
32GB and over: 32KB clusters

I would recommend only FAT32 partitions of less than 32GB due to the ineffeciency of the bulky 32KB cluster size, but it's up to you.

BTW: I used Win98SE for five and a half years, I used to live and breathe FAT32...these figures should be correct.

 

[runswindows95]

The biggest HDD I've done in FAT32 was 120GB. It was about 4 years ago for a Windows 98 system. The machine is still running with FAT32 with no problems.

 

[hergieburbur]

patition magic - iv done an 80gb in FAT32 with patition magic and it seems to work fine.

I usually avoid part magic unless i am resizing, as it usually requires a low level format to clean up the drive if you ever want to use it again.