Hey guys, I need help from the computer pros on here.
I have an external hard drive, it came formated as FAT32, I figured, hey FAT32 is pointless so I reformatted it as NTFS, now I have a Mac, and NTFS makes my my life a pain in the ass on the Mac, so now I want to reformat it.
Windows won’t let me reformat it to FAT32, and I don’t know how to reformat on a mac.
The hard drive is empty now so it should be relatively easy.
Im glad you wernt asking about going from NTSF to FAT32 and saving all the data on the drive.
Anyways, I dont know about macs either, but im sure a google search would bring up good results. It seems like a Mac would have a Disk Utilities that would have all your options.
For windows, just open ‘My Computer’ so you can see all your drives listed. Right-click the one you want to format, and that brings up the list of options, and ‘Format…’ should be right on there. Click on that, and select FAT32, and click ok.
If the format option isnt there, go to Start -> Control panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management (or right click on my computer and select manage). On the left hand side, youll see a list of System Tools, Storage, and Services & Applications. Expand Storage. Then select Disk Management. Select the drive you want, and right-click on it to see the options and from there you can format.
EDIT: I just did the opposite of you not too long ago. Start - Run - cmd, and hit enter. In the command prompt I typed “convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs” Put the drive letter of your drive you want to format, and instead of ntsf, type fat32, and that should work too.
I heard Partition Magic can do it too, without losing data, but ive heard it failing and making things worse and losing data. My favorite program to use is Acronis. You can try that aswell.
So many options.
I have done an ntfs to fat conversion with no data loss some time ago, using windows xp pro, its not a known feature, but there is some command line tools available (either on the os, or on the install cd (recovery console)). It is also documented somewhere on the microsoft help pages.
I’m sure that it could be done using gparted (you can download a gparted live cd from the internets somewhere as an iso file) I can imagine that gparted could do it, as linux systems have only recieved stable/safe ntfs support.
google “gparted ntfs to fat” or something like that, without the quote marks, that should get you somewhere.
gparted (like most linuxy things) is free, and usually much better than the closed source thinggys (i wont get into an argument, and my favorite (mostly) is still leopard, and I am currently on my eee using nlited xp)
Your Mac may be able to format it also, unless it’s being held back by the NTFS formatting that’s there now. Use Disk Utility, found under Applications, Utilities. If it can see your external drive, you should be able to tell if it can format it for you.
Otherwise Windows can, but you may have to dig around the Microsoft Tech Net or other sites to find the info. Also, I remember in earlier versions of Windows the “regular” version of FAT32 had a drive size limit that was really small by today’s standards, so be aware of that. Make sure the method you use allows you to format the entire drive, or at least to make partitions in sizes you want. I think the old limit was something like 32GB so you’ll know if you’re hitting it.
If you’re not concerned about losing data. Delete the partition first, recreate it, and format it in FAT32
you can always reformat it with the partition again in the mac, ive got a mac and i was having the same troubles as you. so ive partitioned it for mac and pc usuage haha.
follow mr.foss’s way and you should have no problem.
If you want to use the external drive with computers running Windows 2000, XP or Vista it might just be easier to leave it as NTFS.
I use NTFS-3G on my Mac when I need to transfer files to an NTFS drive. It enables NTFS-disk usage like any other formatted drive, just plug in the drive, copy the stuff you need, unmount and unplug.