Solved How to Format 5TB drive to fat 32

glasskuter · Aug 15, 2023

Hazel123 said:
Are they actually stored anywhere?

Mozilla Firefox stores all your information (bookmarks, passwords, settings & extensions) under “Profiles” folder in a folder with the “. default” word included on its name, usually found under this path in your computer: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

antspants · Aug 15, 2023

Hazel123 said:
I'm wondering exactly how it works now. Are they actually stored anywhere?

See if this reply from moderator, cor-el is of any help to you.

Passwords and logins all gone | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support

support.mozilla.org

hsehestedt · Aug 15, 2023

Question: Have you considered the amount of space you will be wasting to slack space by using FAT32? It's not as big a problem with large files, but if you have a lot of small files you potentially end up wasting more space to slack space than you actually have data!

Hazel123 · Aug 15, 2023

I don't understand that, sorry. What do you suggest?

SlicEnDicE · Aug 15, 2023

exFAT is the same as FAT32 but with extended features. If you really MUST use FAT file system, then use exFAT, in all other cases, definitely use NTFS.

hsehestedt · Aug 15, 2023

With a large FAT32 volume, you will have a cluster size of 32KB. Files are always written in groups of clusters, so at the very least, every file will take up 32KB of space.

Let's take an extreme example: Say that you want to write a file that is one byte in size to the disk. This will still occupy 32KB of space (32,768 bytes) so you are wasting 32,767 bytes of space.

Again, that is the extreme case, but the point is that whatever the file size is, it will to be rounded up to the nearest 32KB.

If you are writing lots of large files, you probably won't care. For example, if you are saving a file something like 1GB in size, who cares if we waste a few KB of space. But imagine having hundreds or thousands of files each wasting many KB of space on average, and you suddenly limit in a big way how many files you can fit in that space.

The point is simply that FAT32 is a highly inefficient file system, so it is at least something to take into consideration. Maybe it won't matter to you. Maybe it will

Hazel123 · Aug 15, 2023

Thank you for explaining. My understand was that to copy and paste and store individual files, the backup drive needs to be fat32 (or fat) and for imaging it needs to be ntfs. I have an ntfs drive for imaging and wanted one for a portable file storage also. Am I missing something? Presumably I can't copy and paste a load of photos and videos onto an NTFS drive and then reinstall them somewhere else?

hsehestedt · Aug 15, 2023

I have not read every message in this thread, but in 27 posts so far it seems to me that no one has asked why you wanted to use FAT32

You ABSOLUTELY can store all your photos, video, and any other kind of files on NTFS. In fact, it is extremely rare that anyone these days would use anything other than NTFS on user partitions in Windows. There are some uses for FAT32, but generally speaking, not on user partitions of hard disks in Windows systems.

Just to take this a step further, let's say that you copy a bunch of photos, video, etc. to an NTFS disk on your system. That in no way limits you from copying those files to a disk that has FAT32. Typically, that might be something like a thumb drive or an SD card, but that's important.

Unless you have some very specific reason to format a hard disk that is 5 TB in size to FAT32, I would strongly discourage that, In fact, I HAVE NEVER encountered a disk of that size formatted as FAT32. That doesn't mean that it is not technically possible to do so, but I can think of absolutely zero good reasons to do so

.

EDIT: Just to drive the point home, NTFS pretty much is THE format to use for all HDDs. Rather than limiting you from doing certain things, the opposite is true: It is FAT32 that has a whole host of limitations when compared with NTFS. You can store all your data on NTFS, perform backups to and from NTFS, and do a whole lot of other things that simply cannot be done on FAT32.

Bree · Aug 15, 2023

Hazel123 said:
My understand was that to copy and paste and store individual files, the backup drive needs to be fat32 (or fat) and for imaging it needs to be ntfs.

No, you can use an ntfs drive to store anything. This is the one I keep all my TV and movies on. I can plug it into any of my PCs and they all can see the files.

Bree · Aug 15, 2023

Hazel123 said:
My understand was that ... for imaging it needs to be ntfs....

Even that's not strictly true. Backup & Restore (Windows 7) is the only one I am aware of that insists on an ntfs drive for its system images. Macrium Reflect (and probably others too) will split the image into a set of multiple 4GB files if saving an image to a Fat32 drive, like this usb stick for one of my laptops. It's a bootable Reflect recovery drive with an image on it too. It's a laptop I take on vacation with me, so I like to take an image with me, just in case of emergencies.

hsehestedt · Aug 15, 2023

@Hazel123, if you are interested in doing a little reading, or if you have insomnia and need something to help you sleep, here is an article that goes into some detail on the differences between the various Windows file systems:

FAT32 vs. exFAT vs. NTFS: What's the Difference?

Not sure which format to go with?

www.howtogeek.com

Hazel123 · Aug 15, 2023

hsehestedt said:
I have not read every message in this thread, but in 27 posts so far it seems to me that no one has asked why you wanted to use FAT32

You ABSOLUTELY can store all your photos, video, and any other kind of files on NTFS. In fact, it is extremely rare that anyone these days would use anything other than NTFS on user partitions in Windows. There are some uses for FAT32, but generally speaking, not on user partitions of hard disks in Windows systems.

Just to take this a step further, let's say that you copy a bunch of photos, video, etc. to an NTFS disk on your system. That in no way limits you from copying those files to a disk that has FAT32. Typically, that might be something like a thumb drive or an SD card, but that's important.

Unless you have some very specific reason to format a hard disk that is 5 TB in size to FAT32, I would strongly discourage that, In fact, I HAVE NEVER encountered a disk of that size formatted as FAT32. That doesn't mean that it is not technically possible to do so, but I can think of absolutely zero good reasons to do so .

EDIT: Just to drive the point home, NTFS pretty much is THE format to use for all HDDs. Rather than limiting you from doing certain things, the opposite is true: It is FAT32 that has a whole host of limitations when compared with NTFS. You can store all your data on NTFS, perform backups to and from NTFS, and do a whole lot of other things that simply cannot be done on FAT32.

It’s an external portable hard drive rather than a drive on the system.

Presumably others in the links on the page before also wanted to convert their external drives to fat 32.

Maybe I’m out of date

. And need to do some reading.

Hazel123 · Aug 15, 2023

If you have a smaller flash drive or removable storage, FAT32 can likely get the job done. However, for larger flash drives and external drives that have higher file capacity, exFAT may be best. Both formats offer cross-platform compatibility for an external drive you plan to use on multiple machines. NTFS, meanwhile, is the format you want to use for an internal drive running Windows. You may still want to use this format for a removable storage if you know it will only be plugged into Windows machines.

FAT32 vs. ExFAT vs. NTFS: Which Format Is Best for Your Storage Drive?

When you are reformatting a drive, memory card, or flash drive you need to pick a file format. If you see FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS, but don't know which one to pick, here's what you need to know.

uk.pcmag.com

This has been what I have always thought. NTFS for internal drives. Fat 32 for portable external drives. Unless the external drive is for imaging.

Hazel123 · Aug 15, 2023

glasskuter said:
Mozilla Firefox stores all your information (bookmarks, passwords, settings & extensions) under “Profiles” folder in a folder with the “. default” word included on its name, usually found under this path in your computer: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

Thanks. Yes the problem was that file was no longer accessible because I reinstalled.

Edit. In future I’ll back that up before reinstalling.

Bree · Aug 15, 2023

Hazel123 said:
This has been what I have always thought. NTFS for internal drives. Fat 32 for portable external drives.

External USB drives intended for Windows PCs are supplied pre-formatted by the OEM to ntfs, for example.....

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Hazel123 · Aug 15, 2023

But doesn’t it depend what you want to put on them and how you want to use them? If they are pre formatted to Ntfs it’s presumably because they think main use would be for making system image backups.

I’ve normally had 2tb external drives. They come as Ntfs. Some I’ve left as Ntfs, some I’ve formatted to Fat 32.

Bree · Aug 15, 2023

Hazel123 said:
But doesn’t it depend what you want to put on them and how you want to use them? If they are pre formatted to Ntfs it’s presumably because they think main use would be for making system image backups.

No, NTFS is suitable for everything you may want to put on it. For a Windows PC there's no good reason to use any other format.

hsehestedt · Aug 15, 2023

Hazel123 said:
But doesn’t it depend what you want to put on them and how you want to use them? If they are pre formatted to Ntfs it’s presumably because they think main use would be for making system image backups.

I’ve normally had 2tb external drives. They come as Ntfs. Some I’ve left as Ntfs, some I’ve formatted to Fat 32.

NO!

Let's think about this logically - if it was commaon practice to format external hard drives as FAT32, why would Microsoft impose a 32GB limit on FAT32 drives? Yes, I know that it is possible to format much larger drives as FAT32, but the point is that Microsoft really wants you to use NTFS for hard disks (and SSDs), and there are plenty of good reasons for that.

As I stated earlier, I have not seen ANYONE use FAT32 on hard drives in many, many years! Yes, it can be done, that doesn't mean it should. Anything you can do on FAT32 (at least in Windows), you can do on NTFS.

I'll refer you back to the article I pointed to earlier. If you don't feel like reading all of it, read the last paragraph

Scannerman · Aug 15, 2023

Hmm... As far as I know the limit for FAT 32 on external hard drives is 4TB. They might tell you how you can do it on larger drives, but I can't see it done without some serious partitioning. I'd recommend something like Mini Tool Partition Wizard for this.

hsehestedt · Aug 15, 2023

Scannerman said:
Hmm... As far as I know the limit for FAT 32 on external hard drives is 4TB. They might tell you how you can do it on larger drives, but I can't see it done without some serious partitioning. I'd recommend something like Mini Tool Partition Wizard for this.

The Windows Format utility limits you to 32GB, although you can work around that from the command line as well as diskpart. The absolute max for FAT32 is 16TB, but again, Microsoft discourages that.

I think that you may be confusing 4TB with 4GB. 4GB is the largest size individual file that can be placed on FAT32 partitions.