# Tools to format a large drive with Fat32



## bethh (Jun 12, 2006)

Hi,

I have a Windows XP, SP2 system that needs to format a USB Removable Drive that is 100G. I need to format the drive to a Fat32 file system b/c eventually the drive will be used in a Linux system (that needs to write to the drive). I am looking for a tool that will allow me to format the drive to Fat32.

A requirement for the tool is that I need to be able to integrate it with my application, thus there needs to be either an API available, or a command line version of the tool. Thus even though something like Partition Magic will work to format the drive, but there is no interface to that tool that will allow me to integrate it into an existing application.

Does anyone know of any command line tools, or applications that expose an API that will format a drive to Fat32 greater than 32G?

Thanks,
Beth


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

i have moved you to linux,they will know the ins and outs of it


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## Omega Red (Jun 19, 2006)

*Fat32*

Hello,

Is the format currently fat16? If so, Windows XP does not have a process for converting a partition from FAT16 to FAT32. The only conversion process that Windows XP supports is converting from FAT16 or FAT32 to the Windows NT file system (NTFS). Also, Windows XP provides no way to convert NTFS partitions to FAT16/32. 

If you dual boot, you can use the Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 98 drive converter tool in System Tools, or the following command-line tool:

cvt drive: /cvt32

Alternatively, you can use 3rd party tools like PowerQuest PartitionMagic, PowerQuest ServerMagic and other tools to perform the conversion from FAT16 to FAT32 and backwards.

Hope this helps some.


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