FAT32 formatting

[nora.e]

I've got a hdd (Western Digital WD400 IDE) that has had windows xp on it. I'd like to reformat the drive to put windows 98 on it. It will not boot from the 98 os dics. I've tryed to reformat to FAT32 by installing it into the rig in my sys specs as a secondary drive and reformating it from "my computor". The only format it will offer me is NTFS. What needs to be done to reformat it to FAT32?

 

[Yin]

theres a dos command i think its Fdisk or f-disk, it is on the windows 98 boot disc

 

[spud107]

use something like partition magic,

 

[Kursah]

Use Parition Magic, Seagate Disk Tools or I even think booting XP/98 install disk will allow reformat to FAT32...hard to recall since I haven't used that format for years for boot HDD...but keep searching I think you're close!

 

[kenkickr]

If you can plug the drive into a XP system you can partition and format to FAT32 through Drive Configuration. Heres the steps

1. Click Start and go to your control panel

2. Go into Administrative Tools and then open up Computer Management

3. Now click on Disk Management that is located under Storage.

On the right you should see your drive that you want to format to FAT32. Just right click the drive, select format, and switch partition to Fat32. You may need to delete the volume if it will not let you change to Fat32 and then repartition. I have used this many times.

 

[sixor]

download gparted, burn it, boot from it

you can do wherever you want

 

[TheShadowFL]

For the past 8 years, I've used nothing but my custom made Windows ME Utilities floppy disk (or CD) to set up all my hard drives. I first FDISK the drive to set up two partitions, and then I use the DOS Format program to format both partitions. Then I can install any OS I please.
Even when installing Vista, it just reformats the partition to NTFS, the only format it will use.

Good Luck,
Shadow

 

[Deleted member 3]

theres a dos command i think its Fdisk or f-disk, it is on the windows 98 boot disc

Fdisk is only to partition, though in the good old days this is what you did. start fdisk, remove existing partitions. Create a new one. Reboot. Format. And since format under DOS doesn't support NTFS you get FAT(or FAT32).
However you can also boot up your XP disk and use that to create a FAT32 parition and then simply cancel setup. Additionally you can use diskpart in the recovery console.

And of course there are countless of 3rd party tools.