Formating drive in Fat32 (on windows vista)

I have just bought a 500gb hard drive and i want to format it to FAT32 so when i buy a macbook it will work.

Problem: Im using windows vista and it wont let me.

Quote: "windows will not allow you to reformat a drive to FAT32 if it is over 32GB"

I need some sort of little tool that will do it for me. anyone know of any good ones?




Is there any downside to using FAT32? Will it limit the max size of my drive or the max size of a file i can store on the hdd?

I know with XP and am sure Vista, there is that 32GB formatting limit as they really want you to format in NTFS.

Do you have an old Windows 98SE Boot Disk? I have had good luck formatting FAT32 with 98 but never tried 500GB.

The only Limit you will run into with FAT32 is a 4GB Max FileSize Limit. In other words a single file can't be more than 4GB. For most usage you will never hit that file size except with large videos and converting from one video format to another and large WAVE music files, but 4GB is quite large.

Also a Linux CD might do the format for you but it's been so long with linux and never tried FAT32 formatting. Mac OSX will do it but you do not have that right now.

i have found a tool that im using to format it to FAT32, the program is called: "HP USB Disk storage format tool"

Seems to be working at the moment, taking a while though

tobywuk said:

i have found a tool that im using to format it to FAT32, the program is called: "HP USB Disk storage format tool"

Seems to be working at the moment, taking a while though

Click to expand...

Very cool. Do let us know if it works for sure. 500GB formatting FAT32 will take quite a while, Trust me. So don't worry, it's probably working.

it seems to be working so far, im on about 50% and its been about 2 hours.

I believe the Disk utility in OS X will allow it. I have an 80gb laptop drive that I put in an external enclosure. It was formatted as NTFS and windows would only format it as 32gb with FAT32. I believe I used the Disk Utility in OS X and it let me format the whole 80gb as FAT32.

Village Idiot said:

I believe the Disk utility in OS X will allow it. I have an 80gb laptop drive that I put in an external enclosure. It was formatted as NTFS and windows would only format it as 32gb with FAT32. I believe I used the Disk Utility in OS X and it let me format the whole 80gb as FAT32.

Click to expand...

Disk Utility works great for FAT32 Formatting, but the OP wanted to do it before he got his Mac so when he did get it he could hook it up and have files ready to transfer over. That is why he wanted to do it now ahead of time on his PC.

dtravis7 said:

Disk Utility works great for FAT32 Formatting, but the OP wanted to do it before he got his Mac so when he did get it he could hook it up and have files ready to transfer over. That is why he wanted to do it now ahead of time on his PC.

Click to expand...

Reading > Me

i just got back and had an error saying "file size to big" Bugger...


Anyone have any idea's how i can do this in windows vista?

why dont you just format it as ntfs. mac can read and write to ntfs on external hard drives

cant it guys??

im having a bit prob with all this guys! lol

I was unable to format the drive as FAT32 in windows. i tried using the windows format software and i tried third party software like partition magic and no luck.

I think i will end up doing what macwillis said.

Is it true that FAT32 is not as good a file system and transfer speeds are slower?

I have been reading other forums and people have suggested sharing my NTFS drive connected to a windows computer and then access it over a network using samba. Is samba automaticaly enabled on OSX? Also i dont want to have to do this, i want to be able to access it directly.

People have also suggested MacFuse, but it looks complicated to set up and use.

Here's what you could try. Run the Windows xp/vista setup, and in that setup menu, try to format it to Fat32. I think it worked for me.

@Macwillis: OS X can't write to NTFS. But you can use some plugin sort of things to make it write to NTFS quite well.

I've been using MacFuse and the setup was almost effortless (though I think I did it all wrong!). Works for me though...