Nov 1, 2007
Format hard drive with FAT32 in two steps
I recently bought a nice-looking external hard drive from Vantec. Since I have both PC and Mac, I need to format the hard drive in FAT32 filesystem and by Windows Vista’s disk management, it doesn’t give you the option to format with FAT32, only in NTFS. That’s no good because Mac cannot write to NTFS, it can only read the filesystem. With some googling, there is a turnaround to this. The command line is your solution.
1. Go to ‘run’ from the start button and type ‘cmd’ to bring up the command window.
2. Type this in the command line: format (Drive letter): /FS:FAT32
That’s all! The format process will take a while, at least it will give you the percent it’s completing at.
46 Comments, Comment or Ping
Pura Vida
http://deafpc.blogspot.com/2007/11/re-ke5ter-mac-and-fat32.html
Nov 1st, 2007
natech
Pura Vida, that’s cool. Thanks for the tip. I’ll try it out.
Nov 1st, 2007
Fat Heads
Actually you don’t need to use cmd prompt at all. Format the disk as NTFS using the right-click New Simple Volume… approach. Once this is complete you can then right-click on the partition and choose Format. In File System you can then select FAT32 from the drop down.
This might actually take twice as long as the above example but I would maybe use it if you are uncomfortable using cmd prompt.
www.fatheads.co.uk
Jan 10th, 2008
Lloyd Bosworth
OMG, I just had to write and thank you for this. Soooooooooo much easier than any other stupid suggestions on web ( third party downloads, linux, etc. ). All I wanted was ext hard drive for PS3, and now I have it. Thanx again !
Mar 2nd, 2008
natech
Lloyd, no plm, you’re welcome. Thought I’d share in here so anyone else didn’t have to endure what I had to go through. Ha.
Mar 3rd, 2008
Daniel
Hey, i tried your method but it said “Access denied as you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.”
What does this mean?
Apr 11th, 2008
john
I if a 160GB external and I tried the right click and it only has NTFS. I tired the cmd way but it came back and said that the drive was too large
Apr 11th, 2008
natech
Daniel, oh your user name may not be running in administrator mode. You need to be in one.
John, oh strange, hmm. Not exactly sure why. It worked ok on mine.
Apr 12th, 2008
Danny
I have a big problem, I formatted my 40gb HD to NTFS to clear away all the old files then used swissknife to format it into Fat32, after that it wont work and crashes windows Vista and wont open in XP. I tried the above method of formatting it but still nothing, me thinks I have a dead HD on my hands. Any idea if it’s possible to recover it, all I wanted was an exernal hd.
thanks
Apr 13th, 2008
Trevore Hamilton
I needed to format my hard drive to FAT32 so it could be read by my DVD player (USB input). This worked a treat!!! Thanks so much for the advice.
Apr 14th, 2008
adam
vista does alow u to format a drive to fat 32 the partition size jsut has to be less tahn 32Gb
Apr 23rd, 2008
Dan B - danrox48
Daniel, if you haven’t managed yet, to do it, instead of clicking on cmd as usual, right click and choose run as administrator, if you’re not already logged on as such, you will need to type in the password for an admin account. (vista)
Lloyd, also doing this for ps3, add me if ya want. psn: danrox48
Apr 25th, 2008
John
Thanks for the tip guy running vista with a migrain.lol
saved me a bit of messing round and learned a new cmd line for formating with vista so thanx.
oh if you where wondering i came across this on google so very helpful.
Apr 25th, 2008
MikeMc
@John
I got “volume is too big for FAT32″ as well. I did some research and was able to find the following info. from wikipedia…hopefully it helps:
“Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 file systems of any size, but the format program included in Windows 2000 and higher can only create FAT32 file systems of 32 GiB or less. This limitation is by design and according to Microsoft was imposed because many tasks on a very large FAT32 file system become slow and inefficient.[11][15] This limitation can be bypassed by using third-party formatting utilities.”
Apr 28th, 2008
MikeMc
this is also straight from MicroSoft’s website to further support my previous post:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006
Apr 28th, 2008
Tmac
Thanks, great new DOS command I was not aware of. I too was unable to format an external drive to fat32 using basic windows right click format option, would only offer NTFS. This did go slowly but at least it worked. Now finally able to drop movies from DVR to external drive.
Thanks again!
May 3rd, 2008
jc0009
It still says the volume is too big for fat32…help!
May 23rd, 2008
Aris
Good info thank you.
One simple question can one use the formated as FAT32 from the
external hard drive as a main hard drive in a computer.
To install earlier operating system or is there some thing
that will not work.
Your opinion will be appreciated
May 29th, 2008
Scott Kingsley Clark
Thanks, I have a habit of getting new external drives with files already on it. I like to delete and reformat fresh. With a 500GB hard drive, this can be difficult to do through Windows itself, with this command line trick I should be able to circumvent the Mxrosoft (yep, I went there) format process through Computer Managment / Disk Management. 6% done, I’ll leave another comment ONLY if it doesn’t work :-)
Jun 2nd, 2008
Scott Kingsley Clark
No luck, it gives me this happy note after waiting a few hours for it to finish verifying the entire drive:
“The volume is too big for FAT32.”
Jun 2nd, 2008
Scott Kingsley Clark
If anyone has the same issue, http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32format.htm solved it for me. fat32format.exe worked GREAT!
Jun 2nd, 2008
awfa
Thank you
it was good
Jun 18th, 2008
Monti
Hi all i tried to formate with cmd command
when type :format (F): /FS:FAT32 in command line nothing happened,
am i missing something?? i have maxtor 500GB and i am trying to formate with fat32 for my dvr but no luck
i am using windows Xp
plz help am i missing something???
Jun 21st, 2008
Monti
never mind figure out!!! i was not putting space after word format
so command is like this
format F:/FS:FAT32
thanks all its working now
Jun 21st, 2008
Durga Prasad
Excellent help got from here.. I was thinking to reload Win 98/2 K in my system to format my HDD player with FAT32 system of 80GB hard disk.. but FAT32FORMAT.com file helped me a lot… thanks Scott Kingsley Clark for valuable help from your end.. and also for Ke5ter site owners…
Jun 21st, 2008
Durga Prasad
sorry..forgot to add link where I downloaded..
http://www.mympxplayer.org/tool-fat32format-tue-oct-10-2006-153-pm-df366.html
just download file in C drive and use at C:\> (thru cmd from run)
C:\>fat32format H:
(assumed h drive is your destination drive need to format by FAT32 system)
Jun 21st, 2008
Jay
SWISSKNIFE works PERFECT for me EVERYTIME!
I needed to turn my external HD into a backup drive for my PS3 and swissknife does a QUICK FAT32 format so you dont have to wait for the damn thing to take forever, doing it the CMD way.
free download
http://www.download.com/CompuApps-SwissKnife-V3/3000-2248-10070864.html?part=dl-CompuApps&subj=dl&tag=button
Jul 15th, 2008
Jason
It sais enter current volume label for Drive. What do I put?
Jul 23rd, 2008
Dan
Enter any letter that is not identical to the one that were already assigned in your computer for other components like HD, DVD, CD….
Swissknife got very poor rating in CNET
Jul 25th, 2008
Dan
Sorry, I misread your quetion
Jul 25th, 2008
Josh
fat32format worked beautifully. it was hard to understand exactly how to get it working, but once i did it was so easy. why does vista have to make things harder.
Aug 18th, 2008
terence
fat32format just flashed the HD and it converted from the filesys to FAT32. Amazing.
Aug 25th, 2008
john94
SwissKnife didn’t work for me.
Fat32formatter worked like a charm
http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html
Sep 1st, 2008
wari
when i type in the commd; format F:/FS:FAT32 and enter it will then come up with this question ” enter current volume label for drive F:
what should i do then?
wari
Sep 3rd, 2008
DarkKevin
Just have to say Thank you SO much, this was so much easier than others made it out to be. Just one command line, Genuis!
Kev
Sep 12th, 2008
Sean
HAHA, Agreed, this was the simplest and easiest way to do it, every other post on the web tries to reinvent formatting like it’s some fucking mystery thanks!
Oct 2nd, 2008
Richard
thank you so much for your help, im loading my hdd into the ps3 and your advice works perfectly, command prompt is a forgotten art nowadays, its still extremely useful.
Oct 12th, 2008
Brian
For those encountering the “Volume is too Big for FAT32″ when executing the run line command. Is the partition you are trying to format still RAW? (Meening you have deleted the existing partition, created a new volume, but did not format) If so I am getting the same error. To fix, just format in NTFS as Vista suggests then re-run the command line Format X: /FS:FAT32 and it will say ” The type of file system is NTFS. The new file system is FAT32.
Enter the Current volume label for drive X: (Here you just look up the volume label by either viewing properties for the drive/partition in your computer or by using Drive Management from management console)” It will then ask you to enter Y and you should be good to go. Let me know if this approach to your “Drive is too big for FAT32″ helps.
Nov 14th, 2008
Paulo
Many thanks, you just saved me €150, now i dont have to buy a multimedia drive to watch movies on my tv.
Once again many thanks
Best Regards
Paulo
Nov 29th, 2008
ak3e
Wish I had found this site first. Just spent several hours formatting my new 1Tb Maxtor external hd, only to receive the “volume too big for Fat32″ message. I, too, tried Swissknife which other sites rave about but it didn’t work for me. Would only see half of the hard drive and reflect 500 gb instead of the 1tb. The fat32format utility worked great. Formatted my hard drive to Fat32 in about 15 sec. This would have saved me a ton of time…but oh well, at least it’s done. Thanks to all who posted here..great discussion and thanks Scott for letting us all know about Fat32Format.
Dec 23rd, 2008
RaWrOoT
Nice, had same issue, but figured there was a command arg that would still give you the fat32 format option, but was unsure of the syntax… found while looking for (cmd line format syntax fat32 xbox) search string ;) all is good ty :)
Dec 28th, 2008
Odin Von D
Okay, I’ve tried a few variations of this Command version of formatting but every time I do it asks me to enter the current volume label of the drive, and though I try entering whatever values are total, used or free, it will not accept it and will not format it. It reads:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
The new file system is FAT32.
Enter current volume label for drive (drive letter):
Now, the first part of the code that I need to enter type from is , not Documents and Settings\Administrator. Might that be the issue? If it is then how do I change that?
Dec 28th, 2008
Rich
when it says enter volume label what exactly am i looking for. like do i type 455.56 as thats the max space of my hdd. i dont know what to type….
Dec 29th, 2008
PHATMAN
Thanks man! Awesome bit of info…
Dec 29th, 2008
Char
If you are formatting a drive larger than 32gb you cannot use the command prompt. This is the reason for the error “The volume is too big for FAT32.” I wish I had known this before using the command prompt, because the process took 12 hours.
I downloaded the free version of Swissknife, but every time I try to open the program it crashes. I have Vista 64-bit and I do not believe the program supports it
I have successfully downloaded and opened http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/index.html
There are no instructions for this program. I guess they figure if you cannot figure it out then you shouldn’t be using it. I selected the correct physical drive, deleted the partition and then started the new format. It is running now. Hopefully it works.
Jan 2nd, 2009
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