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sitheris
07-25-2006, 06:19 PM
I just bought a 320gb HD to use as an external drive. I would like to take ubuntu off of my fileserver and put windows back on it, so I need to copy my files over to a Fat32 drive while I reformat the server's drive to NTFS (currently it's in ext3).

However when I try to format my 320gb drive as Fat32 to make all this happen, I don't get an option for Fat32, only NTFS.

Is there a max size for Fat32??
drizzt81
07-25-2006, 06:24 PM
according to Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table)
the max Volume size for FAT32 is ~2 TiB.
sitheris
07-25-2006, 06:42 PM
grr then why can't i make a fat32 partition in xp
mwarps
07-25-2006, 06:46 PM
Read the wiki.

The format program can only format up to 32GB partitions.
sitheris
07-25-2006, 07:46 PM
ah i just found out i can do it with partition magic
pettybone
07-25-2006, 09:46 PM
Read the wiki.

The format program can only format up to 32GB partitions.

In XP only? I ask because I have used an entire 76gb fat32 partition in Win98.
Xipher
07-26-2006, 01:37 AM
Yea, it seems XP is the only one with this limit, probably to try and pressure people into using NTFS instead
DougLite
07-26-2006, 04:33 AM
Precisely.

MS believes, justifiably so, that NTFS is a much better choice in a file system on large drives. Less file system overhead, resistant to corruption, are just some of NTFS's advantages over FAT32. FAT32 support is included in Windows 2000 and XP only for backward compatibility in multi boot environments.

Windows XP systems can read and write to FAT32 partions up to the 2TB limit, just not create anything larger than 32GB.
mikeblas
07-26-2006, 07:12 AM
In XP only? I ask because I have used an entire 76gb fat32 partition in Win98.No. Windows 2000 has the same limit.