Comments on: Can I force this Lacie firewire drive to format as FAT32?

Question: Can I force this Lacie firewire drive to format as FAT32?

skylar — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 14:10:20 -0800

I've just bought a Lacie 160 gigabyte firewire drive. It's to be plugged into a Windows XP machine, but also to be written to and read by a Mac OSX machine. I want to format it with the FAT32 file system, but Windows won't let me. Is there a way to force the drive to format as FAT32? [More inside...]

I've done this twice before, with two identical Lacie drives which are both FAT32. Hence I know that this file system works for me and want to make the third drive use the same system. Unfortunately, this time the New Partition Wizard will only let me make an NTFS partition - presumably because FAT32 doesn't support partitions over 32 gigabytes.

Is there a piece of software which will force Windows XP to format the drive as FAT32? It could be a Windows XP or Mac OSX application - but I'm not so keen on using command line interfaces. Oh... and I don't have a floppy drive of any sort. All ideas gratefully received... thanks.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 14:27:03 -0800

You could try Partition Magic for XP.

By: Dipsomaniac

Dipsomaniac — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:38:28 -0800

Apparently using a Windows 98 boot disk should do the trick. Looks like you can download 98 boot images from bootdisk.com.

By: birdherder

birdherder — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 17:35:10 -0800

I just bought [got it on Tuesday] a LaCie 160GB drive and it came pre-formatted in FAT32.

By: majick

majick — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 21:43:29 -0800

Ignore the wizard. Just create the partition with it, then Start / Run / CMD.EXE and thenFORMAT D: /FS:FAT32

By: sid

sid — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:22:34 -0800

Partition Magic is your best bet, but it costs money. I don't think the Windows 98 boot disk supports firewire, and magick's suggestion won't work either (it'll crap out after pretending to format your disk for a good hour or so). If you want something that will work for free, try booting up using a Knoppix live CD and then running QTParted, the free Linux Partition Magic clone.