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How To Convert ntfs back to Fat32??

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[Mudd]

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2002
plz tell me how to get a hdd with ntfs back fat32 and how to format the master boot record?? i have no clue how to get ride of ntfs i hate it plz help links will help to thx?
 
I guess my main questions would be, why do you hate NTFS? It's a better system for larger hard drives and provides better security.
 
If you wanna just format the whole thing, get hold of a bootdisk from Windows 98 from www.bootdisk.com , fdisk the drive (type fdisk and remove all partitions, create new ones), fdisk the MBR (type at the command prompt fdisk /mbr), and after your new partitions are in place, format the drive using format c: where "C:" is the partition you want to format.
 
There is no way to convert the NTFS partition back to FAT32 w/o losing all of your data. If you converted it, my advice to you would be to leave it.

Abra_Volta had a good point, and you sounded terribly rude to him. What do you have against NTFS? It's a far superior filesystem to FAT32 at any rate. Faster, and less fragmentation than FAT32
 
theres no data to loose just want to get back to fat32
 
You can not convert NTFS to FAT32.. you have to format / wipe your hard disk and as such will loose all your settings and data when you reinstall.

The correct way to do this would be that described by minoukat ... " Download a Windows 98 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com , fdisk the drive (type fdisk and remove all partitions [ the NTFS partitions, will be called - non dos partitions ], create new ones), fdisk the MBR (type at the command prompt fdisk /mbr), and after your new partitions are in place, format the drive using format c: where "C:" is the partition you want to format."
 
There are software called Partition Commander 8 from V-COM or Partition Manager from Paragon software which claim to do that, but I'm not sure if it will work with dynamic-disks.
 
[Mudd] said:
theres no data to loose just want to get back to fat32

Then break out your boot disks, or spend some cash and pick up a copy of Partition Magic 8.0. I believe that allows you to re-convert, but I'm not certain, as I've never tried.
 
There is an app or two out there that will convert NTFS to FAT32, but it's either expensive, or you have a major risk of losing data. I believe taht PQ Magic 8 does that, though I can't remember for sure.

But I'd go with reformatting and fdisking the mbr. I switched my HD over to NTFS from FAT32 and I hated it. I just took CD-Rs, backed up everything, and let the format command do what it does best :).
 
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