Solved How to Format 5TB drive to fat 32

Stepson's school is still using Windows 7!

Each of my daughter's laptops has a 250 GB SSD in and 8 GB of memory. I don't want to see them wait for programs to open before they can work on their assignments. The last thing they need to do is run out of storage. They all love their laptops and they use them extensively. Their tablets also have keyboards because I bought keyboards for their tablets just in case they needed them. The older one likes the keyboard but the younger one just likes the case that it comes in. So tablets for travel, laptops for school, and desktops at home. They're covered.

Hazel123 said:

Stepson's school is still using Windows 7!

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I really can't blame the school for this. It's hard to abandon an OS that is tried and tested and proven. I'm still waiting for Windows to offer another one that can do all that WIN 7 did and more. I'm not holding my breath.

Yep stepson also progressed and has a gaming PC and a Core i7 laptop now (the laptop is very old but it's a good one).

Two of my daughter's desktops use the old X58 platform and the Bloomfield i7 CPU. The elder uses an i7 960 and the younger an i7 920. I've offered to get them newer platforms and they flat out turn me down. In fact, they're horrified at the very idea. The younger made me promise her that she would still get to use the same CPU when I purchased a replacement board for her. (The capacitors in those old Dells only last so long.) They're happy with these old quad cores. It's my youngest gamer girl that wants the newer stuff and she has it. So yeah, you're stepson has good taste.

Old thread but putting this here in case it helps anyone.

**Note: This only works on older Western Digital Passport & P10 Drives that have a P/N ending with a -0A or My Books that have -NA, so your drive will probably be this type and work.

The 4th post in this thread had it correct, but this goes into more detail. Originally developed to use on Wii consoles, this process for certain Western Digital drives ONLY (for now) was developed. I've dove this many times on Windows 10 & Windows 11 with the WD Quick Formatter software. Just ignore the error it throws, click OK to close the window and it will still format the drive. In converting the drive to XP compatible (it doesn't even ask to check the box anymore) it changes the sectore size from 512 ro 4k which is whats needed. Then after that you can use the FAT32_GUI Formatter to make it FAT32 32k and see the entire 5TB drive as one single partition.

See my post here: How to use a larger than 2TB Hard Drive on a Wii as a Single FAT32 Partition

@Hazel123

Ok, I'll ask. Why do you want FAT32?

Ghot said:

@Hazel123

Ok, I'll ask. Why do you want Fat32?

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It was over two years ago now And I'm not sure I can remember and it's now an ex drive - it failed quite quickly. I think along the way I learned that it didn't need to be fat 32. For years I thought saving files (ie copy and paste all files) needed to be fat 32 and ntfs only for images. Only to find I could have it on ntfs for both files and images. Against everythign I had believed for years (from previous advice)

Hazel123 said:

Only to find I could have it on ntfs for both files and images

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And that would be correct.
Even Windows XP was NTFS.

You can also mix and match partition types if you wanted to.
Some NTFS, some FAT32, etc.

It's an old thread that's been posted on and was already marked as resolved

Hazel123 said:

It's an old thread that's been posted on and was already marked as resolved

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I know, but I wanted to play anyway.

What I did not follow in this thread was why it was regarded as such an issue.
MiniTool Partition Wizard can format large drives as Fat32. Windows is happy to work with them; it merely cannot do the formatting job.
I use some Fat32 1TB MicroSD cards in my Windows 10 & Windows 11 computers without experiencing any problems.
[I use them as local additional backup drives that I can connect to my Android phone in an emergency. Android is happier with Fat32 than NTFS.]


Denis

The FAT32 boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting the maximum FAT32 volume (not partition) size to 2 terabytes with the optimal sector size of 512 bytes. The maximum FAT32 volume size is 16 TB with a sector size of 4,096 bytes. I've never done this with a windows utility, though. I always use gParted

Admittedly, times change and sometimes manufacturers surprise us with relatively reliable products from time-to-time. As a PC builder/repair guy it behooves me to say that my experience with Western Digital mechanical hard drives has been considerably less than pristine. More than 80% of the PCs brought to me by people encountering irreparable hard drive issues were using Western Digital mechanical drives. I don't know if this is an "only in Canada" thing or if it extends to the rest of the globe. Yes, I've seen my share of bad Seagate drives as well (especially those slim 500GB drives) but more commonly it's a WD drive that has cratered. Brand names aside CMR (conventional magnetic recording) hard drives seem to be able to take more abuse than SMR (shingled magnetic recording) hard drives. So for those who insist on purchasing mechanical drives from Western Digital I highly recommend making sure that they are CMR hard drives. This applies to external USB type drives as well.

Once upon a time there was an issue with external drives over 3TB keeping their partitions unless they had a FAT32 boot sector and the user avoided formatting them to GPT. This issue was not limited to Western Digital external drives. Perhaps that was the deal with this 5TB drive. Ultimately, I can only speak from personal experience on this and I believe most of my external drives are now GPT. This does not appear to be an issue anymore although it might still be with older systems than what I use. Perhaps someone else here might know.

FAT32 still has its uses. It is needed for flash drives, SD cards, utility drives, and it is a favourite among those who do PC repair. I still use it to flash BIOS, for example. I imagine it will still be around for some time.

Microsoft is finally removing the FAT32 partition size limit in Windows 11
The FAT32 size limit is moving from 32GB to 2TB in the latest Windows 11 builds.
Published: Aug 16, 2024
«While the partition limit for FAT32 is being extended, there is still a 4GB size limit on individual files stored on a FAT32 volume.»

Microsoft is finally removing the FAT32 partition size limit in Windows 11

The arbitrary limit is finally being removed.

www.theverge.com