How to format external hard drive to FAT32 in Windows

Posted on September 20, 2008 at 5:31 am

Trying to format a large external USB or Firewire hard drive to the FAT32 file system? Can’t do it? Only see an option for formatting the drive using the NTFS file format? Well if you answered yes any of those questions, then you’re at the right place.

I was recently trying to format my 1 TB MyBook external hard drive in Windows XP to FAT32 instead of the overly forced-upon NTFS format. Why? Well because I needed to connect it to a NAS device and the NTFS permissions were causing the NAS not to be able to access the drive. Simple solution is to use FAT32, no security, no problems. Though it’s sometimes useful to format a USB drive in NTFS format.

Also, formatting a drive in FAT or FAT32 will allow it to be read by other operating systems, such as Mac, Linux, and older versions of Windows such as Windows 98.

Unfortunately, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 will only format a removable drive in FAT32 if it’s less than 32GB! Hmmm…that pretty much cuts out ALL modern external hard drives!

However, Windows can format a drive that is larger than 32GB in FAT32, but you have to use the DOS command prompt. However, if you have a drive that is 1TB or larger, you may still get an error saying “The volume is too big for FAT32”.

In that case, you can use a free program called SwissKnife that will allow you to format an external hard drive that is up to 2TB in size. Let’s go through both methods. In case you are having problems getting your external hard drive to show up in Windows, read my article on how to change the drive letter for an external drive in Windows.

Format external drive in FAT32 using DOS

Open a command window by going to Start, then Run and typing in CMD.

Now type in the following command at the prompt:

format /FS:FAT32 X:

Replace the letter X with the letter of your external hard drive in Windows. Windows will go ahead and begin formatting the drive in FAT32!

Format external hard drive in FAT32 using SwissKnife

SwissKnife is a nifty little program that is completely free and that you can use to format many types of external drives such as USB, Firewire, PCMIA, SATA and SCSI. You can also use it to create partitions on an external hard drive and it formats faster than Windows.

So next time you want to format a hard drive in FAT32 and Windows only gives you an option for NTFS, make sure to follow one of the two method mentioned above. Enjoy!

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

103 Responses to “How to format external hard drive to FAT32 in Windows”

PC said on : September 21st, 2008 at 2:08 am

Cool tutorial. I think partition magic software will do it much easily. What do you think?

siavash said on : September 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

after near 2 hours format of a 1TB external HDD in DOS promt, computer promted awfuly: Volume is too high for FAT32 !!
Who was said Bill Gates is clever?

chris thompson said on : September 30th, 2008 at 10:09 am

thanx, 2nd method worked a charm, i was worried i wouldnt be able to get my hard drive hooked up to x box 360, but all is now restored. now i just need to download all i lost. boooooooooooo

Giovanna said on : October 4th, 2008 at 4:54 am

Thanks a lot! I didn’t know how to make windows give a letter to my external unformatted disk. Now it’s done.

Richard said on : October 5th, 2008 at 8:22 am

I used swissknife to do the partion. it will only format 429mb of my 1tb drive, any suggestions?

robert said on : October 7th, 2008 at 6:16 pm

mine wont work says, this volume is write protected

Joey said on : October 8th, 2008 at 1:27 am

Yeah this swissknife thing will only format 400gb ish of my 1tb drive, anyone got any ideas?

laysin said on : October 17th, 2008 at 7:46 am

many thanks for your information. i been facing this problem for long time and always borrow a Win ME to do the format of FAT32. Now i can do it easily at home.

Brian Ferris said on : October 18th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

mine is 160 GB hard disk extrenal … command prompt still told me it is too big !!!

Tried the Swissknife option … each time i click on the USB H: (External drive in question), the program crashes …

cant really understand ….

on the other hand windows option only give me NTFS option …. any help guys…

thanks

Andy Cooper said on : October 25th, 2008 at 11:53 am

I have the same problem as Brian Ferris.
By dos – says too big ( after going through whole procedure !)
and Swiss Knife hangs.
I can’t find any other way of trying to do this!
I must add though that my disc was previously an NTFS fromatted disc – does this make a difference?
Thanks for reading – many more thanks if you can help !
Andy

HerbDoctor said on : October 26th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Check this link out i found guys, it just helped me split my 300g wd into two 139g fat32 partitions for my nas drive and it worked like a treat, Here is the link

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co......format.htm

Those that get stuck basically just save the formatfat32 file to the C drive then go to command prompt type cd.. until it just says c: then type in this fat32format x: (x being the drive number you want to format), then press Y.

Helen said on : October 26th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

very useful information, thanks a lot

Andy Cooper said on : October 27th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Thanks that seems to work. And very fast! – How come it is so swift?

Many thanks to everyone for helping me to feel normal again!
Andy

Pezh said on : October 28th, 2008 at 3:53 am

perfect! thanx

Pancho said on : November 8th, 2008 at 9:36 pm

I tried the Swiss Knife as well, but I can only get 429 GB out of a 1TB External HDD, even if I do it in NFTS.

Lydie said on : November 11th, 2008 at 11:15 am

Heh guys,
Thanks for the life saving tip. I need my 640Gb volume in FAT32 to hook up to my satellite pvr that only accepts that format.
For those who get the “you don’t have enough priviledges” rigamarole when you try to format, before you double click the cmd.exe, just right-click the cmd.exe to get to the menu and select “execute as administrator”.
Then open a command windows and proceed as above.

This works in Vista, I’m assuming it’s valid for legacy versions too. )

Lydie said on : November 11th, 2008 at 11:17 am

Oh and BTW. Give DOS time to work. It’s veeerrrryyy sloooow but will get there.

Paul said on : November 18th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

I had the same problem. I really tried to make something (everything, that here is written), but I could not reformat my external hard drive (WD-500 GB) to FAT32. Suddenly, absolutely unexpectedly I have found out a site and could make it, reformat my external hard drive to FAT32. It was to make easily, but has borrowed time.
Here is the link
http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html

jung hua said on : November 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 am

Did anybody can give me the link for download swissknife ? thank you.

jed said on : November 23rd, 2008 at 10:56 pm

Thank you so much for this, now I can use my huge ext hard drive with my PS3!

Paul said on : December 7th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Thanks for this valuable advice; after ’struggling’ through all kinds of non-working solutions format my WD 1Tb as FAT32 so I could use it to browse photo’s and watch video on my flatscreen (via USB); both the ‘tokiwa’ solution (post 18) and formatfat32 (post 11) did the job and incredibly fast too!

DOS don't work! said on : December 7th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

I tried this with a 200 GB HD on Windows XP Pro x64…

C:\Documents and Settings\mark>format /FS:FAT32 f:
The type of the file system is RAW.
The new file system is FAT32.

WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK
DRIVE F: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? y
Verifying 194466M

[*** two or three hours later, I get this message... ***]

The volume is too big for FAT32.

JOHN said on : December 9th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

Paul (#18) THANKX!!! i did it – after days of trying with dos and swiss i finealy did it!!!! thank you

willfull said on : December 10th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

Found this link in another forum, posted by a guy asking the same question. It’s to the Western Digital knowledge base entry “How do I format an external USB or FireWire hard drive as FAT32 in Windows?” WD offers a small utility that can convert the drive to a single FAT32 partition.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bi.....faqid=1364

Quote:
Western Digital has a Windows based utility that will reformat a Western Digital external USB or FireWire hard drive back to the factory default FAT32 partition. When run, this utility can only create a single FAT32 partition for the full capacity of the hard drive.

Alvin said on : December 16th, 2008 at 5:57 pm

Keep in mind that with a 1 TB disk formatted with FAT32 the smallest allocation on the disk will be 4 KB. Any smaller files will still take up 4 KB. So if you have lots of small files you are wasting disk space.

FAT32 also has a limit of 65 K entries in a directory (FAT16 was 512 files).

john said on : December 24th, 2008 at 4:43 am

do u have any idea why i can’t copy MKV files (about 4 G and up in size) on my FAT32 formated 1 T EXTERNAL HD ?

Pieter said on : December 27th, 2008 at 11:18 pm

Excellent tech tips on how to format an external drive that are easy to follow and actually work! You are to be commended!

Harjit said on : December 30th, 2008 at 3:43 am

John FAT32 only excepts file of 4GB and less(NTSF any size), you need to split the MKV files down and if play on the PS3 it does not read MKV files, best 2 use MKV2VOB for this

Gus said on : January 3rd, 2009 at 10:04 am

Hi,
I started by formating using DOS and yes got the dreaded message after a few hours, hey got to try it for yourself. I have a 100 GB External HD that I used the Swissknife software to reformat and a 500 GB WD HD that I used the software that ‘willfull’ mentioned, so thank’s for the tips, a great help.

Dan said on : January 7th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

One of the downfalls of fat32, cant store files larger than 4gb on it. Sux and i dont think there is any way around it

Will said on : January 7th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

So… If I reformat my external hard drive, in either the cammand prompt way or with the swissknife program, I will lose everything on my external hardrive?!?! that’s not cool..
If this is so, is there any way around this?

Joal said on : January 7th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

You have saved my life.

I have had to back up my data off my PS3 as it is borked. I was having a nightmare as my external HD was formatted to NTFS and i was believing my luck was out.

Than You

xxx

Nicodimus said on : January 13th, 2009 at 9:51 pm

John, as far as I know, it’s a limitation of the FAT32 filing system. You need to keep your file size below 4gb or they won’t appear.

I can verify that I just used post #18’s link and it worked beautifully to format a 1tb external hard drive to FAT32 for use with the PS3.

Kevin said on : January 15th, 2009 at 8:08 am

@John, FAT32 will only support a filesize of 4Gb

Albert said on : January 20th, 2009 at 9:06 am

FAT32 Harddrives only support 4 Gig files and lower.

Dennis said on : January 20th, 2009 at 10:53 pm

People with problems with SwissKnife hanging. I had that same problem where SwissKnife would hang and then it gets an error. So for everyone that is having this problem, this is what I did that works. Hook the drive up to your computer, then find it in My Computer and right click it then go to Format, then NTFS and select (quick format). It should do it in just a min or two. Once this is done you can open up SwissKnife and format it with no problems. Hope this helps someone…

Will said on : January 29th, 2009 at 3:01 pm

ALRIGHT!!! LOOK HERE !!!!

okay.. so.. I’ll save everyone a lot of time!
go to http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html
download the formatter (its a really small file anyways)
Plug in your hardrive. (take off any files on your hardrive and save them to something else (computer or other hardrive, or whatever) since all data will be lost).
Load the formatter program.
Select your physical drive.
Click the middle big rectangle box, then hit delete partition.
Hit the big box again, then start.
(It takes a looooonnnnngg time for it to reformat (overnigth for me), but I plugged it in to my XBOX 360 afterwards with an .AVI file, and it worked like a charm! Havn’t tried it with MP4 file yet, but I’m sure it’ll work. If not download a free converter on download.com and convert your files.) ENJOY!!!

cheekeong said on : February 4th, 2009 at 8:31 am

i tried using DOS but later they asked for “current volume label”. mine is 320GB so how?

Myles said on : February 4th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

MY 1000GB DRIVE IS NOW A 429GB DRIVE THANKS TO TRYING TO FORMAT IN FAT32?? PLEASE PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME HERE. I WANT MY 1000GB AS FAT 32.

Richard_Dicks said on : February 8th, 2009 at 5:34 am

Will is right!!!!!!!!!

Finally, I f-ing solution! G-damnit I was getting frustrated! Like other people, that idiotic SwissKnife was only seeing my brand new Seagate 1TB drive as 500GB. WHY???? Yet idiotic Windows XP was seeing the full 1TB. Usually, non-Micropoop programs beat the snot out of MS programs. Not in this case. What an absurd problem with SwissKnife. It’s like SwissKnife is a program that performs a whole metric ass-ton of functions. ALL it does is format, and it cant even do the most basic one correctly? (especially since 1TB drives are so incredibly common, and this is exactly what a lot of people want to do them).

And yes, before you start ragging…..of course I updated and tried this on the lastest version.

So after lots of trial-n-error involving numerous configurations of external HD cases, ect…..I FINALLY found this place, used FAT32formatter, and now I am up and running with a FAT32 formatted HD. So simple even a Microsoft employee could do it.

One thing though, if you choose the normal format instead of the “fast”, then it will take all night. So do it before bed, and within 10 (ish) hours, you are done.

Why was this cool and easy program so damn difficult to find? I tried Google searched, nonags, and all the usual spots, and I found this place by complete accident.

Dont you just love happy endings? (knock on wood)

Sam said on : February 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am

cheekong…when it asks you for the volume label do this:

1.Go on my computer
2.Look at the name of the hard drive (like mine says FreeGate Drive)
3. Thats your volume label

Steve Garth said on : February 9th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

Great tip! Thanks.

KH∀ said on : February 11th, 2009 at 1:57 am

Solution for those who are having trouble with “get 429 GB out of a 1TB External HDD” using :

Two System of Steps:

First Steps: Format it to NTFS using WINDOWS –> the control panel–> Administrative Tools –> Computer Management –> Disk Management –> Format all of it to NTFS (I used Quick format)

Second Steps: Re-Format it to FAT32 using SWISSKNIFE, swissknife will recognize the whole 1TB now –> right click on the NTFS partition –> format –> Format all to FAT32 (also used Quick format)

First it will not display FAT32 conversion. Unplug the external HD safely, replug it back in pc/latop so it’ll recognize it as FAT32. Finish.

I found this out after hours….of finding how Not to do it. Just want to share how I did, to save some people time.

newbee101 said on : February 16th, 2009 at 4:04 am

question for all… will formatting to fat32 cause me to lose my current data on my external hard drive? Do i have to back up the data on another hard drive?

matt said on : February 16th, 2009 at 8:58 am

I eventually reformatted my 100gb seagate external drive to FAT32 BUT IT STILL WILL NOT WORK WITH MY XBOX360, it just says there is no storage device connected.

jolted said on : February 18th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

FINALLY FOUND WHAT WORKS!!!!!!!!

Formatted my new External Seagate 1.5 Terabyte drive with this utility. Here are the cool things about it.

-formats any size hard drive or flash drive
-fat32 or ntfs
-graphical
-it just works (awesome)

http://www.download.com/HP-USB.....01159.html

jolted said on : February 18th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

the above link doesn’t work right, download from here instead:

http://files.extremeoverclocki......php?f=197

Dave said on : February 25th, 2009 at 10:44 am

Jolted,
That link doesn’t work either.
First brings me to the HP Site where I need to type a model.
Please help

nicole said on : February 26th, 2009 at 10:39 pm

I had the same problem with it only showing 429Gb, and i can’t get it to show the full terabyte no matter what it’s formatted as. How do I get it back to showing its original size.

Ben Wintle said on : February 27th, 2009 at 10:52 am

Ha Ha Ha, I have spent hours trying all these different ways to format my Verbatim external Hard Drive back to a FAT32, none of them worked. Then I typed into google Verbatim FAT32 found this program that took 1 second maybe 2 to download. And 8 seconds or was it 10 to fix and return my external drive back to a FAT32.

http://www.verbatim.com/downloads/format.cfm

Simon said on : March 1st, 2009 at 10:26 pm

Dave,
I’ve downloaded the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool from this website:

http://h50178.www5.hp.com/loca.....P27608.exe

Hope it helps.

Cheers
Simon

Simon said on : March 1st, 2009 at 11:20 pm

Hi Jolted

Thanks. Works like a charm. Fast and very user friendly.

Cheers
Simon

T said on : March 5th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

I had the same problem with a 1TB Seagate that would only go to 429GB. I tried the Swissknife but it didn’t work. The Fat32formatter worked great and I ended up with a Fat32 partition at 930GB. Close enough to 1TB. Thanks for all the help.

joe said on : March 6th, 2009 at 3:39 pm

i have the same problem as matt. i just formatted my 500 gb external hard drive to fat32, and my xbox360 says no memory unit detected…can anyone help me out

Dennis D. David said on : March 11th, 2009 at 6:10 pm

18. Paul. Thanks for the tip, I am also using external WD 500GB HD, infact with your idea about website for software formatter triggered me different way, I have thought to visit the website of Westerndigital (www.westerndigital.com)and downloaded their format utility software. As soon as I finished the downloading to my MS Windows XP, I activated the program and in no less than 10 seconds my external WD 500GB “MY Passport Essential” HD was restored to the original factory FAT32 format.

Lou said on : March 17th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

Could I lose my data if I reformat an external hardrive to Fat32 containing pictures, music and movies?

Doug said on : March 26th, 2009 at 4:06 pm

Yeah check out post #40. The FAT32formatter program will solve the problem of Swissknife formatting your 1TB down to 429GB.

FAT32formatter knows how to correctly format it to 1TB.

http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

tirmis said on : March 30th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

I have seagate 1.5TB external hdd. Things I tried are:
Partition Magic: only formats 199GB
EASEUS Partition Master: 499GB
Swissknife: Did nothing at all

And finally thanks to Paul, this tokiwa things debugged version worked like a charm for me.

http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html

Tim Nesdale said on : April 10th, 2009 at 7:10 am

Thanks Paul tokiwa fat32formatter worked like a charm, ps3 is cranking my external 500gb now thank you so much!

bigal said on : April 10th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

I can confirm the tokiwa formatter in comment #58 by tirmis, worked on my Seagate 1tb to full capacity in FAT32. I just used the debug version.

Wii + HBC + MplayerWii + External USB HD (loaded with media) = awsome! Works great.

And i just found a HD loader for the wii to play backups off of the External Drive without burning! Have not tried that yet, but the Mplayer sees the drive and plays the files!

minhas naqui said on : April 12th, 2009 at 3:11 am

the format32 formatter did really work! I am really thankfull to all those people who said to use format32 formatter.

oy said on : April 13th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

I figured out how to SwissKnife V3 after 3 days of hard work.

When opening SwissKnife V3 right click on it and run as administrator. It formated 120gb in less than 8 seconds. I am trying to format a 1tb but it only did half of the drive.

INSANEESAY said on : April 13th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

Thanks this really helped alot. i knew i could use cmd, but i didint remember how exactly. i first did the format a while ago so i could fit bigger files on the harddrive all at once. but then my xbox 360 which i used for watching movies couldint read it. so i needed to put it back. or im just going to make it read ntfs.

fiona said on : April 15th, 2009 at 9:33 pm

I’m trying the format in DOS now. Thank you so much! This has saved me money, tons of time reading (even) more, And let me do it without using the dreaded partition magic. That program is cursed!

Soon I will have all my media fully accessible via Windows, OSX AND my xbox360! Could this mean compatibility, finally?

Wonderful. Thanks again!

fiona said on : April 16th, 2009 at 9:15 am

Ok the FAT32 format in DOS didn’t complete. I woke up to the blue screen of death (atapi.sys) and another one of 0×0000007f. Not to worry- happens all the time in my house!

I later tried to format with bootable ‘Super F Disk’, and it has worked properly! Unfortunately, my xbox360 still doesn’t see it! (It’s a promedion ‘powered by hitachi’ 160GB USB/Firewire hard drive from about 6 years ago)

I keep getting strange messages though when copying mp3 files to the hd, that if i continue, i will lose data such as “Macintosh application info” and “Macintosh multimedia resources”. This makes me think i should maybe change it back to NTFS… though first i will drag the old mac from out of the cupboard to see it it reads/writes to it…

Becky said on : April 21st, 2009 at 3:01 pm

If you are trying to format a large external HDD like 1TB, do not use Swissknife as it will only format 429GB which is just a waste. Use FAT32formatter, its so much easier to use and it will do the entire Harddrive, it may take a couple of hours to do the full format (not quick format) but it does it all, unlike the piece of crap that is Swissknife.
Thank you to the people who suggested the FAT32formatter first just passing it on now.

Brady said on : April 22nd, 2009 at 1:54 am

Guys – this link that was mentioned earlier ‘http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co……format.htm’ is the way to go. Formatted 1Tb in 12 seconds!

carl said on : April 22nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm

Follow the fat32format link, i will work like a charm.

Any body has any clue how to convert my mkv 1280*536 to a format and resolution my YAmaha dvd player will read?

i am trying different sizes with anyvideo converter.

Brian said on : April 25th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

Wow thanks. i have been searching all over the net for this solution. Partition magic never did work for me and this is the fist solution that has worked

Mandy said on : April 26th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

Okay so I have tried just about everything from all the sites and my PS3 still won’t read the drive..
I only converted a 40g drive to fat32 using the swissknife; I created a PS3 folder, then the 4 subfolders PHOTO, MUSIC, VIDEO, GAME
I transfered a few movies (avi) into the video folder but nothing shows up not even an option to view all for a usb.

Is there something that I am missing?? Any help would be much appreciated.

Mark said on : April 29th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

I’d just like to point out to people who are considering formatting a large hard drive as FAT32 that the FAT32 file system does not support individual files larger than 4GB. Worth noting this before you go ahead and change it, make you there is a reason for you to have fat32.

Mike said on : May 29th, 2009 at 5:36 pm

Thanks. This helped me to format an external 2.5″ drive in an enclosure, which I plan to connect to my PS3 as a media drive.

NuttyAsSP said on : May 30th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

SwissKnife lit up Comodo Firewall like a Christmas tree when installed, and then didn’t work, which might have been the firewall.

NuttyAsSP said on : May 31st, 2009 at 9:13 am

I found another way – System Rescue CD can do it. SRD is a version of Linux bootable from a CD that includes tools to manipulate hard drives. It can backup hard drives, just about any format except one, NTFS, which is in beta. It can also resize partitions. VERY useful if you bought a computer with an OS installed and you want to create another partition for backups (for instance, when using Norton Ghost).

To get SRD to work takes a bunch of steps though, you have to download the CD image file (.iso) burn it (I have a hard time finding it every time in Nero), then boot it. Assuming you get to the command prompt, you type wizard and return. Then either type gparted at the command window that pops up, or select it from the menu. At this point it my memory gets a little fuzzy, but I think you (right?) click on the partition and select FAT32. Now the part that took me the longest time. You have to click on APPLY. With gparted, you tell it everything you want to have happen, and the order you want it to happen, and then it does them all when you select APPLY. Nothing will happen if you don’t click on APPLY.

The Xwindows/Linux can be daunting for anyone who has never used it. Also note that to backup up a hard drive you need to ‘mount’ it first. Right before you type wizard there is a comment about it. Search the web, or ask a Linux-knowing friend, or read and re-read the SystemRescueCD website.

Hope this helps … Michael

Paul said on : June 23rd, 2009 at 10:19 pm

I was able to format my external HDD to FAT32 using DOS. SWEET!

Tooten said on : June 24th, 2009 at 11:57 am

hi i have a seagate 500gb external hard drive and i want to be able to play files through my xbox 360. will the fat32 format work or whats the best way?

Victoria said on : June 25th, 2009 at 8:23 am

I tried Swissknife on my Vista Laptop and on our Windows ME machine and had no success in formatting an 500 GB external hard drive to FAT32 for PS3. I used this program (FAT32Formatter) on our ME machine and it is simple and it works! Thanks to those who recommended it! It took a few hours because I didn’t click the Quick Format box. My husband hooked it up to the PS3, so when I got home he was already using it with the PS3 Backup Utility.

http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html

Foxxmame said on : July 8th, 2009 at 11:07 pm

Everyone, try post 18. I recognized my 250gb seagate and formatted it in under 2 seconds. Now my PS3 is able to recognize it.

Anonymous said on : July 18th, 2009 at 1:58 pm

hahaha….I read all these posts trying to convert my iomega 500gb hard drive from NTFS to FAT32.
Instead of trying any of these, I went to iomega website – they gave a fat32 formatter software which did the job in less than a minute…Perfect! Done!!

User said on : July 31st, 2009 at 1:56 pm

Here’s an easy way to format a large drive in Windows XP: codingassistance.blogspot.com/2009/06/format-large-hdd-as-fat32.html

Richard FDisk said on : August 6th, 2009 at 10:41 pm

Quote:
“Unfortunately, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 will only format a removable drive in FAT32 if it’s less than 32GB! Hmmm…that pretty much cuts out ALL modern external hard drives!”
(-_-)

actually that pretty much cuts out almost “All” modern disks internal or external

good luck purchasing anything less than a 40GB;

except the new SSDs are available in less than 32GB

I absolutely don’t care for NTFS one bit, I find the security permissions / denials a useless pain in the rectal area which is where M$ should insert NTFS, along with their “File Ownership” junk;

I go out of my way to avoid using NTFS, and use FAT / FAT32 as much as possible;

Programming the 32GB FAT32 limit was just plain rude!

just like the programmed 128GB RAM limitation of 64-Bit windows, when they know full well that 64-bit address space is way larger than that

I use a Symantec Enterprise Product (BESR 6.52) to create all my FAT32 disk partitions (use windows to create a 20GB FAT32 primary partition and use copy drive in BESR with the options to expand volume to fill empty space)

though technically I may be in violation of the EULA in “working around, any limitations in windows…” but as far as I’m concerned, I need large FAT32 external disks and it’s none of their business how I created them.
and if I decide to install one or more of those large FAT32 disks internally oh well.

BG said on : August 7th, 2009 at 7:36 pm

Fat32Formatter works with Windows 2003 too. Sweeeeeet!!

Amster_G said on : September 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am

Wow, this has completely messed up my brand new LaCie 500GB hard drive…

I had the hard drive on and I was only fiddling around in the programs (SwissKnife and fat32formatter), I didn’t even format anything…

Now when I turn on my HDD and go to Computer (Vista), everything in that window freezes unless I turn off the HDD.

Stephen said on : September 1st, 2009 at 7:08 am

The Dos seems to work fine for me on my 500GB (really 470GB)

for Vista users, Search cmd, then right click on cmd.exe and pick Adminstarer rights. follow and its done =]

done after afew hours… DOS is a much slower way but effective

Stef said on : September 1st, 2009 at 7:27 am

I also tried the Dos method and after about 3h format , It said drive to large to be formatted.

I’m downloading Swissknife now to try it. Will post experiance

zed said on : September 2nd, 2009 at 11:15 am

Thanks, I needed to format my WD HDD to FAT32 for xbox360 to play xvid/divx movies.

Jeff said on : September 3rd, 2009 at 8:13 am

As Ben Wintle said above…..

http://www.verbatim.com/downloads/format.cfm

I tried all of the suggestions offered, which worked to some degree, but the Verbatim option worked quickly, flawlessly and painlessly.

I formatted my 1TB external LaCie HD with a Samsung drive using the Verbatim software in about a minute and it formatted the ENTIRE HD leaving me 966GB of usable FAT32 formatted space. I wanted my HD formatted to FAT32 to use via the USB cable to attach it to my Pioneer DVD player in order to view .avi files because the only format my player will recognize is FAT32.

Forget the other suggestions…..I’m sure some have success with one or the other…..but the Verbatim option takes 2 minutes of your time, works as it should and cuts the frustration level down to zero.

mkfan786 said on : September 4th, 2009 at 7:42 pm

USE THE POST 37, IT WORKS!!!!! I HAD A 1.5TB IN NFTS. I FOLLOWED POST 37′S INSTRUCTIONS AND NOW ITS A FULL 1.5TB DRIVE IN FAT 32!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!

Benn said on : September 8th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

I downloaded this swissknife program and when I open the exe file, I can’t find the program anywhere on my computer. It unpacks then disapears
Any ideas?

JR said on : September 10th, 2009 at 11:21 pm

I wound up using the following link. Took just a few seconds and my 320gb HD was formatted to Fat32

Gian said on : September 21st, 2009 at 8:03 am

hey thanks! formatting my drive now to fat32, but it’s taking forever though… i should have just formatted it to ntfs first so that there wouldn’t be any files then format it to FAT32… right? that would be faster right?

Criss said on : October 11th, 2009 at 5:41 am

I have a problem with my old PS3-40GB HDD. I want to use it like external HDD drive, because I have a new PS3 HDD 320GB Seagate. After formatting my old drive with fat32format.exe can’t use it with PS3. PS3 don’t recognize it.The power led and acces led(Rack ASUS for 2.5 HDD) is blinking. When I connect to my computer everythings is fine, and I can use it like others divece with USB.
The power uf USB from PS3 can be the problem?

gardy said on : October 24th, 2009 at 12:04 am

this goes to PAUL, u really removed my misery as ur advice to go the site tokiwa, a formatter. I almost lost hope on how to format my hard drive, but then as i read comments on how to format external hard drives, specially ur comments, it really help me a lot and now i can watch & download movies through my PS3. Thanx a lot PAUL & GOD bless.

Mathias said on : October 24th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

I got a 1TB omeaga or what ever it’s called… And I dont really need 1TB to be FAT32, so what I did was to use my windows xp cd, split the HDD into two, one with 32GB the other with what is 900 something… The one with 900 something GB have NTFS formated where I store all my stuff. when I want to hook my HDD to the xbox, I simple put the things I need into the 32GB FAT32.

Hope you understand, btw I used the first guide to format in FAT32.

disco pepsi said on : October 25th, 2009 at 5:38 pm

Post 43 works a treat. I have a 1TB seagate external hard drive and is now fully formatted in FAT32. Cheers. Save downloading more programs

Mathias said on : October 29th, 2009 at 11:31 am

Hello,

If anyone like me had trouble useing the SwissKnife program on a 1 TB or more HDD, and not being able to format in DOS I found a solution that worked for me.

First, I used my Windows XP CD, to split my HDD into two Disks, ‘D’ and ‘E’. ‘D’ I made 32 GB and ‘E’ I made the rest, 960 GB.

Then I used DOS to format Disk ‘D’ (32 GB) in flesystem FAT32.
My Disk ‘E’ (960 GB) I formated in NTFS, where I can store all my things.

When I want to watch a movie useing the xbox, I put the movies, music or what ever, in the Disk ‘D’ where FAT32 was installed and it works perfectly.

Use Disk ‘E’ to store all the movies, music you got!

Eli said on : November 2nd, 2009 at 10:56 am

The DOS directions worked amazing. he just left out the step where i had to name the drive. but that was simple enough to do and then it was exactly on. good guide. thanks for making this.

Ian said on : November 3rd, 2009 at 4:51 pm

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU Ben Wintle (#50).
This program works GREAT! After hours of trying a stack of successful links and programs. This program is a dream! Fast, simple and WORKS!
Formatted a 2.5″ Fujitsu 160GB using Vista in about 10 seconds.

http://www.verbatim.com/downloads/format.cfm

jup said on : November 3rd, 2009 at 10:16 pm

Thank you, Will, for sharing that very important program.

I went through the process of clearing a backup drive (took all night) before trying the format tool. (Only to see it lacked FAT32 and instead had something else FAT. (Which did not work.) Went to Download.com. Found SwissKnife. (Which acted like it was doing something. But, in fact, did nothing at all. Then, crashed after several attempts to reload it.)

Followed it up with finding this help site and tried the DOS approach. Got some sort of message about not having the authority to run such a process. (What the??? Never heard of ‘elevated mode’, before.)

jup said on : November 3rd, 2009 at 10:21 pm

(Meh…scroll clicked Submit too soon.)

If it hadn’t been for Fat32Formatter, I don’t know what I would have done in order to backup the PS3 drive. Thank you very much. This program should be submitted to TwoCows and Download to make everyone life a litle easier on this issue.

Brian said on : November 4th, 2009 at 9:37 am

Omg i owe u a lot! i bought a 500gb HD and it wasnt working with my xbox and i was downloading everything, then when i read this and did what u instructed, it works now with my xbox, Thank you so much.

Dawn said on : November 4th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

I was struggling with formatting my external hard drive until I found these instructions. I knew it would be simple. Thank you.

rob said on : November 5th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

I used swissknife to try and convert his 500GB HDD into FAT32 so that it would be compatible with his PS3
Swissknife came up with a blank error message (literally a blank notice which i could only click ok on) and then “stopped responding” and now the HDD is corrupted and buggered

EPIC TUTORIAL : /