Formatting HDD's

[kevstah2004]

Use either
http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/
or
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index. ... format.htm

Windows cannot format a volume larger than 32GB using the FAT32 file system
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... US;Q314463&
so using either Windows built in Device Manager DEVMGMT.MSC or FDISK to format the drive is useless.

Files larger than 4GB can't be stored on the FAT32 file system either.

This limitation is by design and according to Microsoft was imposed because many tasks on a very large FAT32 file system become slow and inefficient. This limitation can be bypassed by using third-party formatting utilities above Windows Me supports the FAT32 file system without any limits. However, similarly to Windows 95/98/98SE there is no native support for 48-bit LBA in Windows ME, meaning that the maximum disk size for disks in ME is 137GB 28-bit LBA.

32-bit LBA 2TB in swiss.

Use speccy to get details of your hdd, untick the google install options.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_speccy

[gtmtnbiker]

Windows cannot format a volume larger than 32GB using the FAT32 file system
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... US;Q314463&
so using either Windows built in Device Manager DEVMGMT.MSC or FDISK to format the drive is useless.

FAT32 can support larger than 32GB volumes. The largest size is 2TB.

The 32GB limit only applies when you're running the format tool during Windows XP installation.

[kevstah2004]

2TB in swiss 8TB if it supported 48-Bit LBA I think or 128PB
I know but none of the windows programs can format FAT32 above 32GB that's why you have to use a third party one instead or Win 98/ME, but the actual WinME OS it's self wouldn't be able to see it if it was over 137GB, Win98 OS bound at the lower 32GB as well. Nobody wants to run two OS's just to format a damn drive.

[doktor_krotch]

No, afaik the addressing limit with FAT32 is 8TiB with 32KiB clusters. Because the boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count this limits volume size to 2 TiB on a hard disk with 512 byte sectors. It hasn't got anything to do with 48-bit LBA.

Swiss does support 48-bit LBA because without it, HDDs would be limited to 128GiB (137GB). The largest HDD supported in 48 bits is 128PiB, but this doesn't relate to the file system you use.

Iirc, Microsoft doesn't let you use their formatting tools to format a drive larger than 32GB in FAT32 because according to them it's unreliable. Or something, idk. I'll try and get a source on that.

I used the utility in Acronis True Image to format mine.