Reformat an NTFS disk to FAT32?

Sun Apr 20 23:28:57 EDT 2008

Well SuSE 9.3 doesn't handle it gracefully.  I wouldn't be going through 
this grief if it did.  I am trying to get my user data /home archived 
onto the usb disk so I can install a new distro.
One of these days I can go doze free, but my current employment doesn't 
yet offer that opportunity. :)
Hence the FAT32 formating.

Bruce

michael miller wrote:
> When I was setting up this computer to dual boot Win XP and FC8 I
> initially thought that I would have to convert the hard drive with my
> win xp files from ntfs to fat32 in order to have them accessible both to
> linux and win xp.  I quickly found out that fc8 has no trouble reading
> and writing ntfs files so I just left that hard drive alone.  The "linux
> only" hard drives are formated for ext3.
>
> Mike Miller
> On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 15:42 -0400, Bruce Labitt wrote:
>   
>> Ben Scott wrote:
>>     
>>> On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at verizon.net> wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> I've looked around for this and I see a way or two to do this.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>>   As usual, I'm going to ask: Why are you doing this?  What are you
>>> trying to accomplish?  :-)
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> Now that I think about this, all that I want is a format that I can read 
>> and write to for the WinXP machines that I have to live with and with 
>> linux.  The disk does not need to be bootable from XP.  Unfortunately 
>> when I received the disk it already was preformatted NTFS.  I don't have 
>> any ntfs tools on my old distro.  (I want the disk so I can store  stuff 
>> so I can migrate to a home copy of Scientific Linux.)  I just want to 
>> have FAT32 on it so I can somewhat indiscriminately use the disk for 
>> both linux and windoze.
>>     
>>>>  One could use mkdosfs, but the documentation indicates that
>>>> the disk won't be bootable.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>>   Any FAT filesystem created by mkdosfs won't be bootable, because all
>>> mkdosfs does is create a filesystem.  It doesn't install an operating
>>> system.
>>>
>>>   What OS are you looking to boot from the FAT partition?  Or are you?
>>>   
>>>       
>> Nope - don't really need to.
>>     
>>>   Generally speaking, if you're looking to install a bootable OS, I
>>> recommend using the tools native to that OS to do so.
>>>
>>>   In the world of Microsoft, to install a bootable MS-DOS, you boot
>>> from floppy or CD.  You use FDISK to create the partition, then
>>> rebooted (still from floppy/CD) (DOS only checked the partition table
>>> at boot).  Then you ran "SYS C:" (where "C:" is the partition you just
>>> created).  That installed a boot loader and copied the DOS sustems
>>> files (IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS) to the proper places, along with the
>>> shell (COMMAND.COM).
>>>
>>>   Windows NT and descendants generally require you to run the
>>> full-blown GUI "SETUP" routine.  The OS is too complicated; there's no
>>> trivial install possible.
>>>
>>>   Windows 3.x/95/98/ME load on top of DOS, and aren't really magic
>>> beyond that, but getting a working install going in the first place
>>> still needs the "SETUP" routine.
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>>>>  I think it should be possible in fdisk ...
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>>   fdisk only works with partitions, not filesystems.
>>>
>>>   You might want to use a more sophisticated tool, like qtparted or
>>> gparted or even parted (command line), which handles more of this
>>> stuff for you.  If you'd rather know the gory details:
>>>
>>>   Generally speaking, creating a mountable filesystem is a two-step process.
>>>
>>>   First, you create a partition for the filesystem to live in.  A
>>> partition designates a "slice" of the disk for some particular task
>>> (like holding a filesystem).  Each partition has a type code which
>>> helps the OS identify what's supposed to be in the partition.  That's
>>> the type you're seeing in fdisk.  Setting the partition type doesn't
>>> do anything other than change the "type" field in the partition table;
>>> it's up to other things to make the contents of the partition actually
>>> match the type.
>>>
>>>   Step two is create the filesystem in the partition.  A filesystem
>>> contains all the housekeeping information to keep track of files,
>>> directories, permissions, last-modified-time, free space, and so on.
>>> Under *nix, one generally uses the some kind of "mkfs" tool to do
>>> this.  (In the Microsoft world, one uses "FORMAT" for all the
>>> Microsoft filesystems.)  "mke2fs" creates Linux EXT2 and EXT3
>>> filesystems.  "mkdosfs" creates FAT and FAT32 filesystems.  "mkswap"
>>> marks a swap partition (which isn't technically a filesystem, but
>>> serves the same purpose for this discussion).
>>>   
>>>       
>> I don't want a multiple partitions, just a single FAT32...  So from your 
>> description above I'd change the partition to "c" FAT32 LBA.  And then 
>> mkdosfs -F 32 ...
>>     
>>>   If the partition type doesn't match the filesystem you actually
>>> write to the partition, things may actually still work, depending on
>>> the OS, the tools you're using, and what you wrote there.  For
>>> example, the ext2 and ext3 drivers in the kernel don't care what the
>>> partition table says; they look for a signature in the superblock.
>>> But tools which look for ext2/3 filesystems to mount for you may only
>>> look at the partition table.  Microsoft's OSes generally require the
>>> partition table to be correct, or Bad Things happen.
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>>>>  I'm sure which of the million format options available is "FAT32".
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>>   There are several partition types for FAT32; which one to use
>>> depends on the disk geometry.  If the disk is big enough that it can
>>> no longer use CHS (cylinder, head, sector) to address disk blocks, and
>>> instead *must* use LBA (linear block addressing), FAT partitions get
>>> different type codes.  (Why?  Because MS-DOS, which Windows 98/ME
>>> still boot from, couldn't figure it out without help.)
>>>
>>>   You have to use the LBA types for partitions located above the
>>> roughly 8 GB limit of the classic INT13 BIOS interface.  Partitions
>>> which exist entirely below the 8 GB line use the non-LBA type.  (I
>>> think.  It's been a long time.)
>>>
>>>   According to my fdisk, the non-LBA FAT32 is type 0x0B, while the LBA
>>> FAT32 is 0x0C (don't enter the "0x" prefix when working in fdisk).
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> My eyes must have glazed over when I saw all the W95 options - they all 
>> looked the same.  So c looks like the "right" one.  (For "W95 FAT32 
>> (LBA)). 
>>
>> So what are options 1b and 1c ???
>>
>>     
>>>   To get an idea of just what a mess this is, you can see the list of
>>> the approximately 15 different "size barriers" here:
>>>
>>> http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/bios/size.html
>>>
>>> -- Ben
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>>>
>>>   
>>>       
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