USb 3.0 external formated to fat 32?

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

Having some trouble formatting my external WD my passport 1tb 3.0 hdd in fat32 googled it and I have found two programs that are suppose to do the trick swiss army knife and HP USB disk storage format tool but neither seem to play nice with windows 7 64 bit anyone have a better solution?

Automata · Dec 20, 2011

Have you tried the built in Disk Management? I'm pretty sure you can specify FAT32, but I don't have Windows 7 here at work to try it for you.

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

from what i have read u cant format over 32gb in fat 32 on the windows disk management utility

Automata · Dec 20, 2011

chidesd said:
u cant format over 32gb so it wouldn't really work on a 1tb hdd unless I had lke 30 partitions. could be wrong though

The boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting the FAT32 volume size to 2 TB for sector size of 512 bytes and 16 TB for sector size of 4,096 bytes.

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

hmm guess ill try it again but ive never been able to get it to work

MattNo5ss · Dec 20, 2011

Windows 7 doesn't have the FAT32 option in Disk Management, but it does have the exFAT option. I like exFAT since it allows for single files larger than 4GB and still works across different OSes.

I found this out when I bought a couple cheap open box HDDs to setup up as external drives and wanted to format them to be used across Win7 and OSX.

Automata · Dec 20, 2011

Did not know that, good information.

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

Id use a different format but im trying to make it usable by my pc and my ps3 which only reads externals with fat32 format.

MattNo5ss · Dec 20, 2011

Have you tried formatting with the cmd line yet?

I think the command is "format <drive letter>: /FS:FAT32" or it may be "format /FS:FAT32 <drive letter>:"

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

yep doesnt seem to be working i used format (Drive letter): /FS:FAT32 line and it asks if i want to format it and then it say formatting 953836M but the % has went past 0 %

Automata · Dec 20, 2011

Sounds like it isn't doing a quick format. There is probably a flag you will need to add for that.

MattNo5ss · Dec 20, 2011

Try putting a "/q" in the command

A non-quick format will take a while on a 1TB drive since it would perform error checking on the sectors. WD Diagnostics took 2.5 hours to check the sectors on the open box Samsung Spinpoint F3...

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

MattNo5ss said:
Try putting a "/q" in the command

A non-quick format will take a while on a 1TB drive since it would perform error checking on the sectors. WD Diagnostics took 2.5 hours to check the sectors on the open box Samsung Spinpoint F3...

when I had in the /q it says volume is to big

Automata · Dec 20, 2011

Can you specify the sector size? It sounds like it is defaulting to a very low value. You'd probably want 4K sectors.

petteyg359 · Dec 20, 2011

Most versions of Windows imposes a 32GB limit when formatting FAT32 (they can read a larger partition just fine, they just won't format one). Try the tool from WD (http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=301&sid=34&lang=en), or boot up a Linux live CD and use mkfs.vfat.

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

thideras said:
Can you specify the sector size? It sounds like it is defaulting to a very low value. You'd probably want 4K sectors.

not for sure what u mean?

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

petteyg359 said:
Most versions of Windows imposes a 32GB limit when formatting FAT32 (they can read a larger partition just fine, they just won't format one). Try the tool from WD (http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=301&sid=34&lang=en), or boot up a Linux live CD and use mkfs.vfat.

just like ever other program ive tried I get a error during install dang thanks though maybe ill just give linux a try

edit got it to install with compatibility mode but when I go to format the hdd it says unable to becasue either to small or not compatible with the hdd

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

Just booted linux up its amazing how something so easy and simple in linux can be so hard and fraustrating in windows 7. anyway its formated now thanks for the help.... now onto a new problem only getting between 20-40mb per sec write speed to my external isnt that pretty slow for 3.0? tried a 3.0 header on my case and a direct usb 3.0 frim the mobo both the same speeds

MattNo5ss · Dec 20, 2011

Glad you got the formatting worked out.

Yeah, that's USB2 speeds. Is your front panel connected with the USB3 mobo header or looped to the back of the board? Do you have the mobo's USB3 drivers installed?

chidesd · Dec 20, 2011

MattNo5ss said:
Glad you got the formatting worked out.

Yeah, that's USB2 speeds. Is your front panel connected with the USB3 mobo header or looped to the back of the board? Do you have the mobo's USB3 drivers installed?

headers pluged into the mobo 3.0 header and I also tried pluging it into the usb 3.0 on the back panel. and I do believe I have to driver for the usb 3.0 installed driver is call etron usb 3.0 host controller

USb 3.0 external formated to fat 32?

Registered

Destroyer of Empires and Use

Registered

Destroyer of Empires and Use

Registered

5up3r m0d3r4t0r

Destroyer of Empires and Use

Registered

5up3r m0d3r4t0r

Registered

Destroyer of Empires and Use

5up3r m0d3r4t0r

Registered

Destroyer of Empires and Use

Likes Popcorn

Registered

Registered

Registered

5up3r m0d3r4t0r

Registered

Similar threads