I am wanting to format my brand new 320gb 2.5" external hard drive from NTFS to FAT32

Now we both know the limitations that MS has put on FAT32 being you cannot format anything over 32Gb

How can I get around this?


Reason I am wanting to format in FAT32 is that the new hdd i have purchased is to be plugged into my xbox360 at all times via USB. And stupidly the 360 does not support NTFS.

You should be able to split it up into 32gb partitions, but then you're still limited in the amount of partitions you can have, and I'm not even 100% on that.

Man the 360 not supporting NTFS is quite the oversight :\

Lol having many partitions is practical.

Dont macs use FAT32? cos im sure they dont support NTFS

Found a solution.

There are a few partition tools out there, I tried 5 of them, 1 worked.

EASEUS Partition Master, simple and easy to use. It can Create, Delete, Re-size/Move, Copy or Format any disk.
When formatting in FAT32 I had no problems and there is no limitation of the 32GB nature.

http://www.partition-tool.com/

FAT32's limit is way over 320GB. Individual files can't be over 4GB maybe that's what you were thinking of, or FAT12's limit of 32MB. I don't think the limits were intentionally set by Microsoft, they were just all that was needed at the time. Isn't it weird that Microsoft's console, can't use Microsoft's patented file system? It's probably something to do with permissions compatibility or something.

The limits generally come from the size of the data fields the filesystem uses internally, ie. an integer can only hold up to a certain value before it overflows.

Of course FAT32's limit is over 320GB, the issue is that Microsoft sees FAT32 as an outdated file system and would just rather you use NTFS, therefore doesn't let you format anything over 32GB using the windows formatting tools. Even using command line formatting tool doesn't let you do this.

I tried using command line to format into FAT32 and a message pops up nearing the competition of the format stating "The volume is too large for this action to be completed" or something along those lines.

As said on wiki,
"A limitation of 32 GB applies to the Windows 2000/XP installation program and filesystem creation tool. However, both systems can read and write to FAT32 file systems of any size. 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."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

Oh lol never knew about that limit. I doubt they did it for the reasons that they say. It'll be because NTFS is proprietary and they don't want people swapping their external drives between their mac's and linux PC's. They're dicks like that

Why would you connect it to your xbox360, and why would it need to be more than 32GB when connected to your xbox360?

Just have one FAT32 partition and one NTFS partition.

Also, Linux to read/write from NTFS just fine if set up correctly, provided the volume is clean. Otherwise it will only mount read only (like mine is) and you need to boot into windows and run checkdisk to fix it