Reformat an NTFS disk to FAT32?

Bruce Labitt bruce.labitt at verizon.net
Sun Apr 20 11:11:41 EDT 2008


I've looked around for this and I see a way or two to do this.  One 
could use mkdosfs, but the documentation indicates that the disk won't 
be bootable.  I think it should be possible in fdisk, however, I'm not 
sure which of the million format options available is "FAT32".  It looks 
like the column is partially cut off...  Anyone know which option to 
use?  Thanks.

 From fdisk

Command (m for help): l

 0  Empty           1e  Hidden W95 FAT1 80  Old Minix       be  Solaris boot
 1  FAT12           24  NEC DOS         81  Minix / old Lin bf  Solaris
 2  XENIX root      39  Plan 9          82  Linux swap / So c1  
DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 3  XENIX usr       3c  PartitionMagic  83  Linux           c4  
DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 4  FAT16 <32M      40  Venix 80286     84  OS/2 hidden C:  c6  
DRDOS/sec (FAT-
 5  Extended        41  PPC PReP Boot   85  Linux extended  c7  Syrinx
 6  FAT16           42  SFS             86  NTFS volume set da  Non-FS data
 7  HPFS/NTFS       4d  QNX4.x          87  NTFS volume set db  CP/M / 
CTOS / .
 8  AIX             4e  QNX4.x 2nd part 88  Linux plaintext de  Dell Utility
 9  AIX bootable    4f  QNX4.x 3rd part 8e  Linux LVM       df  BootIt
 a  OS/2 Boot Manag 50  OnTrack DM      93  Amoeba          e1  DOS access
 b  W95 FAT32       51  OnTrack DM6 Aux 94  Amoeba BBT      e3  DOS R/O
 c  W95 FAT32 (LBA) 52  CP/M            9f  BSD/OS          e4  SpeedStor
 e  W95 FAT16 (LBA) 53  OnTrack DM6 Aux a0  IBM Thinkpad hi eb  BeOS fs
 f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) 54  OnTrackDM6      a5  FreeBSD         ee  EFI GPT
10  OPUS            55  EZ-Drive        a6  OpenBSD         ef  EFI 
(FAT-12/16/
11  Hidden FAT12    56  Golden Bow      a7  NeXTSTEP        f0  
Linux/PA-RISC b
12  Compaq diagnost 5c  Priam Edisk     a8  Darwin UFS      f1  SpeedStor
14  Hidden FAT16 <3 61  SpeedStor       a9  NetBSD          f4  SpeedStor
16  Hidden FAT16    63  GNU HURD or Sys ab  Darwin boot     f2  DOS 
secondary
17  Hidden HPFS/NTF 64  Novell Netware  b7  BSDI fs         fd  Linux 
raid auto
18  AST SmartSleep  65  Novell Netware  b8  BSDI swap       fe  LANstep
1b  Hidden W95 FAT3 70  DiskSecure Mult bb  Boot Wizard hid ff  BBT
1c  Hidden W95 FAT3 75  PC/IX



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