Formatting 690g to FAT32

[kinoman5]

I am trying to format my D drive (NTFS) into FAT32 format because I heard it would be much better for downloads. The disk manager tool will not let me format the partition so I am wondering if there are any programs that could do this? Please keep in mind this is an internal 690gb drive.

Thank you!

[patio]

Whoever told you that was out of his gourd...

[Salmon Trout]

I heard it would be much better for downloads.Thank you!

This is nonsense as patio says.

[Squashman]

I do agree with patio and Salmon Trout but what I am wondering is if you might have heard someone talk about Extended FAT instead of FAT32.  You should be able to do it with Extended FAT.  This would get you past the file size and partition size limits of FAT32.  I don't have any statistics on performance between NTFS vs exFAT.

[TheShadow]

Before Win-7, I've never used NTFS and have had no problem formatting a 500 gig drive in FAT-32.

For a storage partition, not an OS partition, FAT-32 does give you more access and control over the drive, even from a DOS boot disk, if necessary.  If you're working with large video files you may want to have an NTFS partition for those, as a FAT-32 part. will have a file size limit that you might run into.  I keep one NTFS partition just for Video conversions.

But having said all that, Windows XP will run just fine on a FAT-32 partition, but Vista, Win-7 and Win-8 will not.
Regardless of what OS I'm going to put on a drive, or even if I'm just setting it up as a backup drive, I always use my DOS Utilities disk (floppy, CD or Flash Drive) to run "FDISK" to set up the one or more partitions, and if I want to format that partition, I just use the DOS Format command.
I use the DOS that came with Windows ME, which is more capable than that which came with Win-98.

I was having all sorts of problems getting Win-8/DP installed on an old HD, till I wiped the disk clean with FDISK, creating just one partition on the 200gig drive, and then Win-8 installed without any more problems.

There is always a way, to do what you want with your computer, whether someone calls it nonsense or not.

Happy Holidays!
 

[Salmon Trout]

whether someone calls it nonsense or not.

Was that intended for me?

For a storage partition, not an OS partition, FAT-32 does give you more access and control over the drive

More access? How? More control? How?

[Squashman]

Its more like Absolute access because you have NO control over access permissions.

[BC_Programmer]

Before Win-7, I've never used NTFS and have had no problem formatting a 500 gig drive in FAT-32.

Windows XP and later will not format a partition larger than 32GB as FAT32. I can't recall if this same limitation applied for Windows 2000, though.

For a storage partition, not an OS partition, FAT-32 does give you more access and control over the drive, even from a DOS boot disk, if necessary.

If you are in a situation where you need a DOS boot disk to access the drive, you will probably be focussed on fixing the machine so it can boot into windows anyway. Additionally, when you can boot any old Linux distro CD and access NTFS drives, I question the wisdom of ever booting into a pure DOS environment for 'diagnostic' purposes on a modern PC, especially since the real reason isn't so much for "diagnostics" as it is to feed nostalgia.

[Keithuk]

If you really want to format this drive FAT32 then use EASEUS Partition Master its free, I've used it.