- #Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 how to#
- #Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 software#
- #Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 free#
- #Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 windows#
So I tried that and Win 98SE was showing me a brand new 500 GB hard drive (Drive E) in just a few minutes.
#Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 software#
Someone explained the problem in detail and suggested the Swiss Army Knife tool and someone else said they had used the Verbatim FAT32 software tool and was able to use their new hard drive with Win 98SE. of course I didn't understand any of this until I started searching Google and found other people with the same problem. tried it out right away when I got got back home and nothing.
#Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 windows#
it did not list Windows 98SE on the box, only 2000 through Vista, if I remember. Always wanted a larger external hard drive, so earlier in the year I saw that Office Max had a Seagate 500 GB USB on sale and I also had a $10 off coupon so I thought I'd grab one. all I could afford at the time, anything larger up to 250 GB was really expensive, at that time. I had previously bought two smaller USB hard drives about 5 yrs ago, both 80 GBs. It will probably be of more help to someone in "todays" world. thanks for posting all your information on hard drives. They are all early SATA Seagates, tend to get hot and I don't trust their reliability as storage media.ĥ) I try to stay away from SATA HDDs by Seagate. I have relegated them to more or less computer junk status and I am storing grandfather backups on them. I have also quite a few SATA HDDs which are not 1TB. I have found 4x192GB FAT32 + 1x 163GB NTFS partitions quite practical and have partitioned all my external USB/eSATA HDDs in this way. A larger capacity uses too many drive letters, a smaller capacity would result in too many HDDs lying around. partition size, I am even more cautious and use only 192GB.ģ) I create FAT32 partitions only under Win98, never under WinXPĤ) My preferred size for a SATA HDD is 1 TB, not larger and not smaller. Somehow I prefer to stay away from other tools for partitioning and formatting HDDs as FAT32īTW, PartitionMagic can convert NTFS partitions containing data and programs from NTFS to FAT32.Ģ) I do not use 500GB FAT32 partitions. Handy little FAT32 toolHi duffy98, somehow your approach runs counter to what I do:ġ) I use exclusively PartitionMagic v to create and format partitions, especially FAT/FAT32 partitions. Not sure if this tool will work on every external drive, can only speak for the Seagate USB drive. I hooked it into a computer that is USB 2.0 (Windows 98SE) and then I hooked it into an older USB 1.1 hub that I still use. it is also backward compatible to USB 1.1. showing up as a 500 GB drive as Drive "E". It took about 20 seconds and it was now a USB FAT32 500 GB external hard drive. I went to a friend's XP computer and hooked the USB drive up and ran the FAT32 utility.
You will need an XP computer or some newer OS since the USB hard drive has to be "seen" to be changed. You don't have to have a Verbatim hard drive since mine was a 500 GB External Seagate drive. Verbatim provides a FAT32 format utility that eliminates the 32 GB partition limitation.
#Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 how to#
Verbatim FAT32 Tool: How to Reformat a Verbatim Hard Drive for Windows the link in the original post no longer works but I found the program under a new link.
#Reformatting external hard drive to fat 32 free#
I checked to see if Verbatim still supplied the little free software program. My last post is now 9 pages back into history. I first posted this information back last March 2010, thought I would repost it again for any new people that have recently bought a new USB drive that is NTFS and they would like to change it to FAT32.