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Reformatting A New NTFS 500 GB USB Ext Hard Drive to Fat32 ...


Monroe

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Went to Office Max yesterday and bought a new Seagate 500 GB External USB Hard Drive to use with Windows 98SE. When I connected it, the USB icon in the tray appeared but no drive letter was showing in My Computer. Was hoping I could make this work ... Read a review on this particular hard drive and that it would not work with Windows 98SE since it comes pre-formatted for NTFS. However, after searching around on Google last night, I found this little utility that is supposed to reformat a NTFS USB hard drive to FAT32.

http://www.verbatim.com/downloads/format.cfm

How to Reformat a Verbatim Hard Drive for Windows

Verbatim provides a FAT32 format utility (see further below for download instructions) that eliminates the 32GB partition limitation.

There is a link in this part:

Formatting to FAT32

Click here to download the Verbatim FAT32 format utility. Save the file to your computer at a location that can easily be remembered. After the file has finished downloading, close all internet browser windows and browse to the location of the file.

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I didn't think it would have to be a Verbatim hard drive. I don't have an XP computer though ... you will need that since the USB hard drive has to be "seen". I went to a friend's XP computer today and hooked the USB drive up and ran the FAT32 utility. It took about 20 seconds and it was now a USB FAT32 500 GB external hard drive. Tried it on my Win 98SE machine ... showing up as a 500 GB drive as Drive "E" ... it is also backward compatible to USB 1.1 ... I hooked it into a computer that is USB 2.0 (Windows 98SE) and then I hooked it into an older USB 1.1 hub that I still use.

Don't know if this will be of any help to anyone. Maybe someone that also wanted to get a larger external hard drive. Getting hard to find older FAT32 external hard drives these days. That Fat32 utility made everything very easy and painless.

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Edited by duffy98
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Yes jaclaz, I had found some info about using SwissKnife before I bought the new USB External hard drive. Already had SwissKnife downloaded. I also found info on using FDISK and DOS ... but I am weak on DOS knowledge and after I bought the drive, I got lucky and found the little Verbatim FAT32 utility ... couldn't have been any easier ... at least for me ... maybe for some others also. Thank for the reply.

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  • 1 month later...

I thought that XP/Vista had an internal utility to reformat to FAT32.

Yesterday I connected a brand new Toshiba external USB HD, 1.5 Terrabytes on a single partition.

Plugged in my w98 PC, and it works like charm. Just amazing!

It was already formated as FAT32. I don't know if it was formated at the factory or on the Vista platform where it was used the first time.

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Guest wsxedcrfv

I thought that XP/Vista had an internal utility to reformat to FAT32.

Microsoft intentionally handicapped all NT-based OS's such that they can't natively format FAT32 volumes larger than 32 gb - but they have no problems if you attach FAT32 volumes to them that are already formatted and exceed 32 gb in size.

I would think that handicap also extends to USB drives as well.

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I thought that XP/Vista had an internal utility to reformat to FAT32.

Yesterday I connected a brand new Toshiba external USB HD, 1.5 Terrabytes on a single partition.

Plugged in my w98 PC, and it works like charm. Just amazing!

It was already formated as FAT32. I don't know if it was formated at the factory or on the Vista platform where it was used the first time.

Windows 9X has a bug that affects Partitions larger than 1TiB. In some cases accessing Directories located more than 1TiB above the start of the Partition will cause lockup. I have written a Patch for this.

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