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jsousa · Jun 7, 2006, 06:37 PM

So this question is often asked about formatting in FAT32 since its a fairly universal file system. Can I format my hard drive using FAT32 to be larger than 32GB?

Microsoft has forced a 32GB limit on the FAT32; if you have a windows 98 or ME CD you can format up to 127GB but thats not a very good solution for most of us.

So i set out to find a solution and with the power of my MacBook Pro, Mozilla FireFox and Google, I found this solution.

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ind...at32format.htm

enJoy, hopefully this will help many Mac Users get a good multi OS Portable HDD up and running.

And yes while widows doesn't allow formats larger than 32GB it will read and write up to 2TB the physical limit.

mduell · Jun 7, 2006, 07:08 PM

Microsoft hasn't "forced" a 32GB limit on FAT32; in fact, they designed it to support larger partitions.
The "32GB" limit refers only to the disk formatting utility in Windows and the Windows installer. In Microsoft's eyes, FAT32 became deprecated (by NTFS) back when 32GB was a huge partition, and they never saw reason to update the partitioning tool. Windows has no problem reading and writing larger FAT32 partitions.

jsousa · Jun 7, 2006, 07:19 PM

actually their is a reason why you could format (When installing windows) an HDD larger than FAT32 using Windows 98 or Windows ME. It was then limited to 32GB in order to try to push people to NTFS installs. NTFS is more secure and FAT32 has really bad defragment issues. Fact is; Microsoft disabled large FAT32 Formatting in windows XP in order to shove people onto NTFS. In most cases NTFS is much better, except when dealing with non Microsoft Operating Sytems

ghporter · Jun 7, 2006, 07:29 PM

Read this very carefully: the 32GB limitation is ONLY IN THE SETUP OF WINDOWS 2000 OR XP. I'm running a network attached 300GB drive formatted for FAT32. Win2K and XP support partitions up to 8 TERRABYTES, though the format tool in the XP and Win2K install systems are limited to 32GB initially. (That means you can change it to a larger partition later, for example by using a Win98 startup disk and using its format tool.)

They did not "try to force people into using NTFS." NTFS was in transition when Win2K came out, and FAT32 was very popular. But drives larger than about 8GB were rare, so they didn't push the envelope too much. You are totally wrong about MS "forcing" anything on anyone.

jsousa · Jun 7, 2006, 07:50 PM

wait so why would win2k and xp have a limit wheress 98 does not? That fails to make sense to me.

However, dispite weather Microsoft forced 32GB limitations or not, the fact is the limitation is very present, and this seems to be an excellent solution, assuming you have another computer with windows to format the drive with.

And yes their is the 98 solution, but how many people still have a 98 disk? Fact is that OS is alteast 8 years old (not sure of the original release date)

Tomchu · Jun 7, 2006, 09:01 PM

They wanted people to move to NTFS because it's more reliable and less sensitive to OS crashes (among other things), but they haven't done anything actively to prevent you from using huge FAT32 partitions other than removing the ability to format >32 GB ones from setup. Mduell is pretty much correct.

jsousa · Jun 7, 2006, 09:19 PM

Okay so explain this then; and Im just asking.

If they weren't trying to prevent FAT32 use, then why was it open to any zise in WIN98 and WINME but then limited to 32GB in WINXP and WIN2K?

ghporter · Jun 7, 2006, 09:55 PM

They use the same format tool in both XP's and 2K's install system-XP's is partially based on 2K's. The format tool for 2K is built around using the "FastFAT" driver (mentioned in the 2K article I linked to). As I said earlier, there weren't that many hard drives larger than about 8GB available when 2K was being developed, (for most installations anything larger would have been huge), so a "shortcut" to improving speed and responsiveness in the file system driver made sense, even if it didn't get anywhere near the potential capacity of the file system. Microsoft never hid the fact that this was a limitation of the installer's formatting tool only, and they never did anything that would make any other tool not work, including those for Win98 and ME. So how is that "forcing" people to use NTFS.

I personally like NTFS because it's more robust and includes some of the support features that make HFS+ the stellar system it is. But that doesn't mean I was forced into it.

jsousa · Jun 7, 2006, 10:02 PM

For a Mod your a pretty pissy person.

Anyways, I was just asking as I clearly stated in my most previous post; since I can reconize that I was very likely incorrect on the issue. And i do believe I most likely was. Either way, the original idea of the post was to give people a way to format their external drive in FAT32 up to whatever size they wanted. Not to debate weather MS pusehd NTFS on people or not. And it appears that they did not.

And ulatmalty, I do not find NTFS to be a poor filesystem (although last i heard, which was several motnhs ago and could be incorrect, was that Microsoft was canning the NTFS for vista. Either way hopefully someone will find this little guide as useful as I have.

ghporter · Jun 7, 2006, 10:27 PM

I'm not pissy, just precise.

(Years in front of a classroom will do that to a person.)

The only real problems I've ever seen with NTFS are that it doesn't do the kind of journaling that would make file recovery workable (it isn't called "journaling" with NTFS), and you can't easily boot into a command prompt mode and operate on NTFS partitions-the "boot disk" Microsoft provides instructions for is either a well-filled CD or SIX floppies. It's just that it's not the best choice in every situation that makes people think it's not "perfect." Nope, but then nothing is!

Tomchu · Jun 8, 2006, 03:48 AM

The limitation has nothing to do with drivers or format utilities or performance shortcuts ... it's an artificial limitation, pure and simple. They simply don't want people using FAT32 on large drives, because it's not robust and not nearly as reliable as NTFS -- especially when it comes to crashes. And it can't deal with files >4 GB in size. Imagine Joe Public getting that shiny new 500 GB drive for his computer, formatting it with FAT32, and finding that he can't store more than 4 GB of raw footage from his digital camcorder into a single file.

It would suck, and cause headaches for Microsoft -- hence the push for better technology. The industry is slow to move on its own, unless someone is there to give it a shove every now and then.

ghporter · Jun 8, 2006, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

They simply don't want people using FAT32 on large drives, because it's not robust and not nearly as reliable as NTFS -- especially when it comes to crashes. And it can't deal with files >4 GB in size.

Those are excellent points, but I don't think Microsoft is as concerned with the public's reaction as you seem to. It's not like they ever were before... But the 4GB file size issue is another thing they didn't seem to worry about when putting stuff together; how many multi-gigabyte files did people mess with in 1999? Not many, at least not in the general public.

Let's just say that for a shared drive, FAT32, real and artificial limitations included, is the most practical format for now, shall we? I would love to see an NTFS driver for OS X and an HFS+ driver for Windows, and both included standard in the OSs. Both OSs virtualize the file system anyway, so it really is a driver issue, not structural.

mduell · Jun 8, 2006, 09:44 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

The only real problems I've ever seen with NTFS are that it doesn't do the kind of journaling that would make file recovery workable (it isn't called "journaling" with NTFS)

NTFS does do some journaling, or something similar to journaling.

From the Wikipedia: A file system journal is used in order to guarantee the integrity of the file system itself (but not of each individual file).

ghporter · Jun 9, 2006, 08:21 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

NTFS does do some journaling, or something similar to journaling.

From the Wikipedia: A file system journal is used in order to guarantee the integrity of the file system itself (but not of each individual file).

True. But it isn't at the same level of HFS+ or EXT3. You don't get the same functionality because of this, so you can't backtrack and recover as much or as easily. Microsoft doesn't seem to consider NTFS a "journaling file system," either, or they'd be shouting about how cool their "invention" of journaling was.

Either way, NTFS is way better than FAT32 for anything except sharing full file access with OS X.

Tomchu · Jun 9, 2006, 02:50 PM

Journals only deal with file system metadata ... not user data. HFS+/EXT3 won't allow you to recover a file that was opened but not written from the write cache yet. Journals just keep the file system in a consistent state, even after a crash.

All three FSs (NTFS, HFS+, EXT3) do this just fine.

ghporter · Jun 9, 2006, 09:45 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Journals only deal with file system metadata ... not user data. HFS+/EXT3 won't allow you to recover a file that was opened but not written from the write cache yet. Journals just keep the file system in a consistent state, even after a crash.

All three FSs (NTFS, HFS+, EXT3) do this just fine.

I had the impression that both HFS+ and EXT3 had more/better tools for cleaning up after an inelegant system shutdown than were available for NTFS. For example, Microsoft recommends frequent user initiated defragmentation to prevent serious problems in Win2K, while OS X seems to handle keeping an HFS+ volume in shape without user intervention. It also looks to me like the journaling features of NTFS require more elaborate support to be useful-it's great for Win2K Server, for example, but it seems to be of limited use to XP-which may very well be because the application of journaling features is very transparent in XP.

Tomchu · Jun 9, 2006, 09:55 PM

*ALL* file system maintenance and reliability features should be transparent. It's such a low-level thing that the user should never be exposed to journal maintenance on their own.

As for defragmentation ... that's simply a performance up-keep task. All file systems suffer from fragmentation to some degree or another -- NTFS just isn't particularly good at handling it on its own.

gruch · Aug 28, 2006, 06:22 AM

HEY guys, I am happy to find a solution concerning the topic.But one quesetion, why can't
I open the link?http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/ind...at32format.htm

ghporter · Aug 28, 2006, 07:00 AM

It says "page not found" for me. That means the intended target of the link is no more...

Moose · Aug 28, 2006, 09:02 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

It says "page not found" for me. That means the intended target of the link is no more...

Actually, it means that somebody pasted the link in a thread here (or someplace else), and the person who accessed it copied and pasted it instead of clicking on the link (or right-clicking and getting the link copied to the clipboard that way). So that page never existed in the first place.

An example:

http://forums.macnn.com/104/alternat...ons-up-to-2tb/

ghporter · Aug 28, 2006, 09:51 AM

Yep, you're right. When I looked at the link instead of just clicking it, it was kind of obvious... Just looking at what's shown it's hard to see that it wasn't just compressed by the board. But that's ALL there is!

Moose's link is complete, and it works. But it's to THIS thread... Did you mean that, Moose?

selowitch · Aug 28, 2006, 09:52 AM

My new iMac arrives tomorrow with a 250GB hard drive. I'm thinking of creating one Mac OS partition, one Windows XP partition, and one "shared" partition to which both OSes can write and from which both OSes can read. Is this possible?

Moose · Aug 28, 2006, 10:22 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Just looking at what's shown it's hard to see that it wasn't just compressed by the board.

I dunno about you, but when I see a URL with an ellipsis inside, I get suspicious. Especially when the surrounding string is "ind...at32format.htm"

Originally Posted by ghporter

Moose's link is complete, and it works. But it's to THIS thread... Did you mean that, Moose?

Yes. That's why I called it an "example" instead of a "correction."

Moose · Aug 28, 2006, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by selowitch

My new iMac arrives tomorrow with a 250GB hard drive. I'm thinking of creating one Mac OS partition, one Windows XP partition, and one "shared" partition to which both OSes can write and from which both OSes can read. Is this possible?

1) Why four partitions? If Mac OS X and Windows XP both can write to the partition, they both can read from it.

2) Boot Camp itself does not support this. While it would certainly be possible to use diskutil resizeVolume to resize the HFS+ partition after Boot Camp Assistant runs, I have no idea whether or not this will hose your ability to boot XP (as it may throw off partition enumeration).

selowitch · Aug 28, 2006, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by Moose

1) Why four partitions? If Mac OS X and Windows XP both can write to the partition, they both can read from it.

I said "three," not "four." 1 MacOS + 1 Windows + 1 Shared = 3.

Originally Posted by Moose

If Mac OS X and Windows XP both can write to the partition, they both can read from it.

Right. But Windows XP can't read HFS+ volumes such as those found on Macs. And Macs can read FAT32 but not NTFS, if I recall correctly.

Originally Posted by Moose

2) Boot Camp itself does not support this. While it would certainly be possible to use diskutil resizeVolume to resize the HFS+ partition after Boot Camp Assistant runs, I have no idea whether or not this will hose your ability to boot XP (as it may throw off partition enumeration).

Well, I assume BootCamp creates a second partition for Windows to live in. Why not do that, then create the third partition afterwards?

Moose · Aug 28, 2006, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by selowitch

I said "three," not "four." 1 MacOS + 1 Windows + 1 Shared = 3.
Right. But Windows XP can't read HFS+ volumes such as those found on Macs. And Macs can read FAT32 but not NTFS, if I recall correctly.

Yeah. I misread that. Sorry!

Originally Posted by selowitch

Well, I assume BootCamp creates a second partition for Windows to live in. Why not do that, then create the third partition afterwards?

If Boot Camp sets Windows up and says "You are the nth partition on the drive," you may run into problems when it becomes the n+1th partition on the drive. I haven't tried this out yet as I don't have any particular need to and my curiosity isn't worth having to reinstall Windows.

ghporter · Aug 28, 2006, 04:37 PM

Moose, somehow my reading skills must have declined this morning. I saw the link but distinctly did NOT see "An example:" right above it. I blame it on college (first day of class for the Fall semester today-maybe it's the student lounge computer that's to blame-yeah! that's the ticket!).

According to all reports (my Intel Mac is still "on the way") Boot Camp will ONLY work with a virgin-condition single HFS+ partition on the drive, and will ONLY create ONE additional partition. Boot Camp just gives you one partition for Windows, which is why so many people have been deciding to format that partition with FAT32 so OS X can read and write to it.