can USB disk be reformatted to FAT32?

[Anonymous Sender]

I have a USB disk of 60 GB.
According to the terse little pamphlet in the box,
it is formatted NTFS and won't work on a Mac
unless formatted by a Mac.
Now I am curious: can I reformat it to FAT32,
so that I can use it with Windows ME?
I presume that I may need a third-party
program to do this...
[]

[Rod Speed]

Anonymous Sender <anon...@remailer.metacolo.com> wrote

> I have a USB disk of 60 GB.
> According to the terse little pamphlet in the box,
> it is formatted NTFS and won't work on a Mac
> unless formatted by a Mac.
> Now I am curious: can I reformat it to FAT32,
> so that I can use it with Windows ME?

Yes.

> I presume that I may need a third-party program to do this...

Nope, ME should do that fine.

[Arno Wagner]

Just use the standard partitioning and formatting tools.
Althoug Win ME is both outdated and unusable trash...

Arno

[mscot...@aol.com]

On May 16, 3:08 am, Arno Wagner <m...@privacy.net> wrote:

I've used fat32format.exe downloaded free from the web

Michael

[Squeeze]

mscot...@aol.com wrote in news:8dff5057-ba05-4706...@x35g2000hsb.googlegroups.com

What's wrong with using ME internal format.

>
> Michael

[mscot...@aol.com]

On May 16, 10:29 pm, "Squeeze" <rubberd...@duckies.au> wrote:
> mscotgr...@aol.com wrote innews:8dff5057-ba05-4706...@x35g2000hsb.googlegroups.com

> > Michael- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

In this case ME will probably format as a FAT32, but if anyone tries
with XP or 2000, then there is a maximum size after which it refuses
to reformat as FAT32. This is when an external program is required to
convert a large NTFS drive to FAT32.

Michael

[Mike Ruskai]

On or about Sat, 17 May 2008 00:52:23 -0700 (PDT) did "mscot...@aol.com"
<mscot...@aol.com> dribble thusly:

>In this case ME will probably format as a FAT32, but if anyone tries
>with XP or 2000, then there is a maximum size after which it refuses
>to reformat as FAT32. This is when an external program is required to
>convert a large NTFS drive to FAT32.

It's 32GB, FYI. Anything larger, and 2K/XP forces you to use NTFS. Both are,
of course, quite capable of using an existing FAT32 drive >32GB, which means
it's just another case of MS trying out social engineering.

[Arno Wagner]

Pretty stupid, but what eles can you expect from MS. I typically
format large FAT32s under Linux, which also works fine.

Arno

[Justin]

I always thought OSX can read/write NTFS...

Remember with fat32 the maximum file size is 4GB.
That's probably OK with you, but sometimes I transfer video files and I
ran into that problem.
Then I ran into the problem of file permissions on the NTFS formatted key.

[Squeeze]

Arno Wagner wrote in news:698093F...@mid.individual.net

> Previously Mike Ruskai <BUTth...@dontearthlinklike.netspam> wrote:
> > On or about Sat, 17 May 2008 00:52:23 -0700 (PDT) did "mscot...@aol.com" <mscot...@aol.com> dribble thusly:
>
> > > In this case ME will probably format as a FAT32, but if anyone tries
> > > with XP or 2000, then there is a maximum size after which it refuses
> > > to reformat as FAT32. This is when an external program is required to
> > > convert a large NTFS drive to FAT32.
>
> > It's 32GB, FYI. Anything larger, and 2K/XP forces you to use NTFS.
> > Both are, of course, quite capable of using an existing FAT32 drive >32

> > GB which means it's just another case of MS trying out social engineering.

>
> Pretty stupid, but what eles can you expect from MS.

> I typically format large FAT32s under Linux,

Such blasphemy.

> which also works fine.

What. It's not bugged?
Something that works. How surprizing.

>
> Arno