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Asked: 2021-11-22T07:46:01+00:00 In:

Want To Format 100gb Primary Partition With Fat 32

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I have a 500 gb sata hdd and have a 100gb primary partition.i want to format c: with win98 or fat32 how can I do it?

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    4 Answers

    1. You can format a partition to fat32 from disk management if it’s 32 gig or less in size as windows doesn’t like fat32 partitions larger than that:

      http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/…

      You can do it from command prompt:

      http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/format…

      but you need to be careful you know what you’re doing.

      Also, if it’s your intent to install 98 understand that 98 doesn’t natively recognize SATA drives and you’ll have problems installing and running it on SATA.

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    2. Nt 5 program called FAT32 FORMAT can do it, but it has no error checking on it and will even do a NTFS partition as ‘FAT 32’ which of course doesn’t work. Partition choice of NTFS or FAT32 file system type is made at Partitioning and NOT format time so if you have a 100 GB partition already then you can’t just format it to be what ever file system type you want now – you have to re-partition it with the correct partition type byte in the partition table. Windows NT version of FAT32 FORMAT is called guiformat.exe and is first link below.

      http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/gu…

      http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/in…

      It sounds like you need a lot of information and help, while we need much more information from you as to what you are wanting to do exactly in order to provide some of that information you are in very short supply of. On top of that, we just be curious. Best of luck.

      Addendum to information found at the above site – MS-DOS has been patched to use LBA addressing so 8TB is usable in 98 DOS. Windows 98 has been patched so 8TB is usable there too. Format.com and Fdisk.exe are still broke in 98, please don’t use even these ‘fixed’ 16 bit applications above 137GB. Expect trouble even above 64GB.

      Lee

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    3. “Partition choice of NTFS or FAT32 file system type is made at Partitioning and NOT format time”

      Huh? Formatting is what creates the file system, not partitioning. Derek stated quite well in response #1 – “FAT32 and NTFS are “File System” choices – you choose this when you format the drive”.

      I’m unclear on what the OP wants to do. Does he want to install Win98? If he does, there are other issues besides partitions & file formats that will need to be addressed. For starters, he has too much memory – Win98 will not install with 2GB RAM. Next, he has a SATA HDD – it will work with Win98 but only if he changes the HDD setting in the BIOS to IDE mode.

      I’m gonna take a stab at it & say he wants to create a dual boot setup with Win98 & Win7. If I was gonna do that, I would create 3 partitions – one for Win98, one for Win7, & one for data storage. The Win98 partition would have to be FAT32, but the other two could be either NTFS or FAT32. Win98 cannot read NTFS so if it’s necessary to be able to see the Win7 or storage partition from Win98, they would have to be FAT32 formatted partitions. The problem with that is that the cluster size would be at least 32k which means there would be a lot of slack space, & slack space = wasted space. Plus be aware that with FAT32, no single file can be larger than 4GB minus 1 byte.

      The partitioning & formatting should be done using 3rd party software, not during Windows setup. You could either use the HDD manufacturer’s software or a 3rd party program. You should be able to find what you need on the Ultimate Boot CD:

      http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

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    4. What can I say about the abundance of misinformation in the middle of the information age, riider? No one seems to be really interested in updating the stuff, we see limits based on old data/reasons and have to disregard when we know better. FAT 32 partition type byte is 0Bh except over 8GB from sector one where the partition type must be 0Ch to indicate LBA addressing using LBA-mode INT 13 extensions. Sometimes referred to as FAT 32x. NTFS partition type byte has been 07h by comparison. This data is part of the partition table and has nothing to do with data written to disk during format. Formatting programs are not supposed to be changing this partition table data although that would allow FAT32 FORMAT program to actually do an accurately formatted NTFS partition properly to convert it fully to FAT 32.

      Microsoft itself won’t suggest that 8TB is possible with FAT 32 let alone 16TB.

      From day one with a new drive, you first partition it with FDISK and then format it. Try formatting a wiped drive and the OS will not mount it nor see it in order to even begin formatting it. After partitioning you then have to reboot for the OS to mount the drive – you then can not change partition types without another reboot/remount so that the OS can use it properly. Find Ralph Brown’s interrupt list for a rundown of all partition type bytes as they are to exist in the partition table. Here is a part of the manual from aefdisk 1.8 which has an open source version available now at GitHub that has even different unupdated misinformation in it too. As in different and wrong from this yet.
      https://github.com/nagydjol/aefdisk

      There are four types of FAT (File Allocation Table).

      1: FAT12 is now obsolete, used on floppy disks and on partitions
      smaller than 16Mb.
      2: FAT16 is the next step. It can be used if a DOS partition
      is between 16MB and 32Mb.
      3: BIGDOS is also a 16-bit type, but allows larger partition sizes.
      Plain DOS and Win9x/ME use this type nowadays (OS/2, WinNT/2000
      and Linux can also be installed over FAT, but there is no point
      for doing that). The maximum partition size is 2Gb for DOS and
      Win9x/ME, and 4 Gb for WinNT/2000.
      4: FAT32 is the newest, it is introduced in Windows95 OEM Service
      Release 2. It allows really big partition sizes (2Tb). It is
      used by Win9x/ME/2000, WinNT 4.0 cannot recognize it.

      With Win95 OSR2, newer types were introduced to indicate that
      a partition ends beyond the 8 Gb limit. These types are:
      – BIGDOSx (0eh)
      – Extended x (0fh)
      – FAT32x (0ch)
      These types are not recognized by WinNT 4.0!

      Note the outdated information indicating a 2TB limit. It’s at least 8TB, it actually may be 16TB with FAT32 but I don’t have good information on that figure so I’m comfortable suggesting that 8TB is usable.

      Lee

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