Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Need To reformat a 500GB Western Digital Drive to FAT32

Apr 10, 2009 3:17AM PDT

Hi, I have a 500gb External Harddrive, and i need to reformat it back into FAT32 format.

I'm using windows vista 32 bit I've heard that vista and XP have 32gb limitations, but is there a program that will bypass that limit.

Message was edited by: admin to remove email address to prevent spam harvesters from picking it up.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Just links.
Apr 10, 2009 3:23AM PDT
- Collapse -
Need To reformat a 500GB Western Digital Drive to FAT32
Apr 12, 2009 3:27AM PDT

i have 2 machines (1)is a vista os the other is xp pro and have no problem with eather running my 500 gig external or internal drives my xp machine has 4 500 gig drives thst i use for video storage.
i see no reason to reformat to fat files.

- Collapse -
Well!
Apr 12, 2009 1:43PM PDT

I happen to have a PS3 and i would like to put some HD AVI files onto the PS3, which by the way only detects FAT32 storage media. I actually found out how to do it so I'm thanks a lot.

- Collapse -
Well done! The other machine that uses that is
Apr 12, 2009 10:02PM PDT

The XBox 360 is another machine that may need fat32 volumes.

- Collapse -
may give you some suggestion
Nov 24, 2010 10:40AM PST

As we know that convert FAT32 to NTFS could be easily operated for Windows users, as the built-in disk management of computer support such kind of operation. But convert back is difficult, unsafe and trouble. For example, users must backup the data in the partition before formatting or Windows does not allow to format partition as FAT32.SO I suggest you to use some other third party software,like NTFS to FAT32 Converter , I have used it and help me to convert it.I hope it could give you a hand

- Collapse -
Just so we're clear. Are you writing for us to use a 39.95?
Nov 24, 2010 11:16AM PST

Such an item is not worth that much!