We all know about the limitations of Fat32. One of the biggest is the partition limit of 32Gb. Well it seems someone has broken that limit. The following article tells about an application that will format a hard drive fat32 up to 2Tb. May be worth a look.



Format FAT32 drives beyond 32GB limit | TechRepublic

Here is the program link.

Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd

I have as yet to try the program Fat32 Format Samuria. I have a couple of 80Gb IDE drives but feel that is not a test. I just hate to pull one of my 1Tb drives just to validate the programmers claim.

That's interesting LC.

I have used Easeus Partition Manager in Win XP to format a 40 gig Seagate harddrive.

I plug this into a external dvd player that will only read Fat32 drives 40 gigs and under.

I hope you can see it on the two pix I have posted...

@Samuria - Aye good Sir, I have encountered the problems with pushing the FAT over its limit. Nasty that. I had hoped that this small program would make it easier and safer for the regular User who needs to format in FAT32 on a large drive. One who is not tech savy.

@Arctos - Thanks Mate. You have given me another way to expand FAT32. I have Easeus Partition Manager on one of my machines but don't use it much.

@Vger - The reason FAT32 is still around at all is because it plays well with a broad range of OSes. I have a 1Tb WD MyBook external drive that was/is formatted FAT32. Why? So you can use it with a Mac and Windows without a format.

Probably much like the author of the FAT32 formatter program Vger my friend. If you know the structure of the FAT, hard drive blocks and sectors with a little math thrown in then it should not be too hard. The program page does give an overview of how the program works. Samuria and our bearish friend Arctos probably has a better understanding of the process than I. I dare say that if you ask Sony what formatter they use you will get a blank stare. So I go to Western Digital For theirs.

I have a 1 terabyte drive that is Fat32 as well, not sure if it's a Western Digital or the Hitachi drive I bought in the local Aldi supermarket.

The reason I formatted the Seagate 40 with Easeus PM was that my main drive is NTFS, and Windows XP will not give you a option for Fat32 formatting.

The Fat32 replacement exFAT format, is not catching on with external dvd / bluray that have a USB port with appliance manufacturers .

Description of the exFAT file system driver update package

Aye Don. You will find most formatted external drives will use FAT32. I have bought 3 over 500Gb formatted that way. The way exFAT was explained to me was that like NTFS and other formatting schemes it is OS or third party driver dependent. These other formats just don't play well cross platform.