OT - Convert NTFS to FAT32

randy-stewart wrote on 11/30/2003, 6:54 PM
Why would anyone want to do this? My son bought a laptop with an external hard drive. His machine runs XP Home and my machine runs ME. I've got the DVD Burner. He wants to use it via the external hard drive by rendering to the external and then plugging it into my firewire connection and grabbing the file to burn. Of course, ME won't recognize the NTFS drive (I don't think). He has already formated to NTFS on the external. I've searched the forum and can find lots on converting to NTFS from FAT32 but nothing on how to convert from NTFS to FAT32. The Windows help files are the same, all one way roads. He doesn't have anything on the external drive yet so now's the time to convert. Anyone know how to do this or have a lead for us? Thanks in advance for your help.
Randy

Comments

blackaudi wrote on 11/30/2003, 7:00 PM
Quik ? why u still running ME?
donp wrote on 11/30/2003, 7:00 PM
I don't know about Windows ME, I have XP PRO but there is no good reason to revert to FAT32 from NTFS. FAT32 has the 4 gig limit thing. Bad for DV video work.
randy-stewart wrote on 11/30/2003, 7:14 PM
Guys...I know that NTFS is better, however, I don't have XP on my older machine. I plan to buy new in the not so distant future and my current config is singing along with no problems so I haven't upgraded to XP. Therefore, if we want to use the new external hard drive on both machines, we have to configure it as FAT32 for now. Vegas handles the 4GB limit just fine. We can convert back to NTFS later when I get XP. I know this sounds hard headed (why don't I just get XP for my old machine?) but I have my reasons. So, is there a way to reformat as FAT32? Thanks again for your time.
Randy
Chienworks wrote on 11/30/2003, 7:23 PM
The only way to go back to FAT32 is to use FDISK or it's equivalent to remove the current partition (losing all data on the drive) create a new FAT32 partition, and format it. You should be able to do this from either computer.
farss wrote on 11/30/2003, 7:33 PM
Can you not get a network connection between the two machines and just copy the files over that?

Would seem a much more elegant solution than clobbering a drive with FAT32
randy-stewart wrote on 11/30/2003, 10:06 PM
All,

Thanks for the inputs. File transfer using Messinger is a definite solution but I think we will try to format the drive just to see if we can swap it between computers successfully.

Kelly, XP is not recognizing fdisk at the command prompt. Any ideas why?

Randy
XPUser2003 wrote on 11/30/2003, 10:26 PM
>>He doesn't have anything on the external drive yet so now's the time to convert. Anyone know how to do this or have a lead for us? >>

Should be very easy.
1. Plug the external hard drive on the XP laptop.
2. On the laptop desktop, right click My Comnputer
3. Select Manage on the menu.
4. On the open Computer Management Window, click Disk Management
5. On the Disk Management Window, right click the target drive
6. A menu will scroll down.
7. Click Format and set the file to FAT 32.

I've done it before on a hard disk I regularly swap between two computers without any problems.

Good Luck!
randy-stewart wrote on 11/30/2003, 11:12 PM
XPUser2003,
Tried your technique but we don't have FAT32 as an option on the drop down menu after right clicking the target drive. The only option is NTFS. An earlier suggestion from Chienworks was to FDISK the drive but I can't get that command to work in the command prompt. Nothing like a little challenge to keep us up tonight. Thanks for trying.
Randy
riredale wrote on 11/30/2003, 11:20 PM
It's very easy to switch a disk from NTFS to FAT32 by using Powerquest's "PartitionMagic." The nice thing about it is that it is nondestructive--you don't have to reformat or FDISK.

FAT32 is fine for most video tasks. It's true that the file size is limited to 4GB, but Vegas handles the splits automatically for you. It can also handle a VIDEO_TS folder that is 4.37GB (the DVD-5 limit) as long as any single file within that folder is not larger than 4GB.