Formatting a lot of FAT32, quickly

[cambre]

Hi people. I was wondering if there is a way to format many new >32 GB 2.5" laptop hard drives, FAT32, quickly. The only way I know of is to hook the drives up to a 9x machine, FDISK partition it (takes an hour), and then format it (takes an hour). Is there a better (faster) way? I don't know of any way to quick format a fresh drive on a 9x machine and even if there was one, partitioning would still take a while. 2000/XP will partition the drive quickly, but won't format it. On the order of dozens to hundreds of drives, several hours to do each one would be prohibitive. Perhaps a third party app is what I need. Thanks for your help.

[lithium726]

put them on an XP machine, mount them, and tell it to quick format in FAT32. there is a drop down menu in the format dialouge in windows that allows you to choose between FAT and NTFS.

[E4g1e]

put them on an XP machine, mount them, and tell it to quick format in FAT32. there is a drop down menu in the format dialouge in windows that allows you to choose between FAT and NTFS.
Unfortunately, XP cannot format a volume larger than 32GB with FAT32, no matter what. The only way to format such a large drive with FAT32 under XP is to use multiple partitions that are smaller than 32GB each.

[lithium726]

hmm... can 2k?

[unhappy_mage]

http://www.mager.org/mkdosfs/

I was going to suggest Linux, but heck, as long as it's ported to windows, might as well use that. You could also format one and get a disk duplicator if it's gonna be that many drives.

Edit: Eek! (http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=KanguruClone+4+HD) Never (http://www.logicube.com/products/hd_duplication/echo.asp) mind! (http://www.ce-s.com/grystone.htm)
http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/153.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=153)

[Awol]

Find a Windows 98 or 98SE OEM Boot disk.

They include "OFDISK.EXE" (OEM FDISK) and "OFORMAT.COM" (OEM FORMAT)

OFDISK is the same as regular FDISK, just renamed for consistency. Only takes a few seconds, a few minutes for a REALLY large drive, to create a partition. Not sure why it "takes an hour" for you as you mentioned.

OFORMAT is magical! It allows you to use the /Q (quick) command line option on any drive. Normally /Q only works on drives that have already been formatted. Formatting any size drive now takes just seconds.

I've replaced FORMAT.COM with OFORMAT.COM on -ALL- my Win98 bootdisks. (Renaming it back to FORMAT.COM of course.) It is a great time saver.

Awol

[Awol]

Oh, also....

On the Win98 OEM boot disks, they have a batch file that tries to prepare the system for a Win98 load. It checks the drive for a FAT32 partition. If one is found, it formats it and attempts to copy Win98 from the CD. If a partition is not found, it makes one and reboots.

It shouldn't be hard to modify this boot floppy for exactly your task. (Create FAT32 partition. Reboot. Quick format partition. Display something on screen - "DONE", etc)


Awol