Is hard drive FAT32?

How do I find out if my physical hard drive is FAT32. Specifically, I want to know if I am limited to file size maximum of 2GB. Thank you.

Select the drive in the Finder and choose Get Info from the FIle menu; if the disk's format is listed as MS-DOS or FAT32, you will be limited to files which are less than 4GB without reformatting the drive.
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Have you been able to resolve the issue with your Drobo? I'm having the same issue with my Drobo (which I've had a for a year) and suddenly, it's not being seen as a Drive.
The computer detects the disk, but it's not mounted.

Why can't I import video files from an external hard drive?

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By the way, the external hard drive is formatted FAT32 if that matters

Tacomedia
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-set-up-an-external-hard-drive-for-use-with-os-x/
Please check out the above with regard to your external hard drive FAT32 and Mac computer question
By the way, the external hard drive is formatted FAT32 if that matters
SG has already commented on this in his initial reply to you. I thought that the above might blend in to supplement what he has said.
I will watch for further developments in your troubleshooting with SG.
ATR

Reformating External Hard Drives with OSX Utility Application

I am a liberated PC user of 25 yrs, having just installed my new iMac. All went well, but I am not able to figure out how to reformat my old external hard drives (FAT32), which I've been told I need to do to use them for auxiliary photo backups. Can anyone lead me to the solution? Thanks
John M

Hi John
Welcome to Apple Discussions
1. Go to Applications > Utilities and open Disk Utility
2. Connect the Drive +(note: the 1 & 2 order won't matter the drive will show up either way)+
3. Click-on and highlight the Drives icon in the left side list and select the Partition tab +(note: you can name the partition now or change it any you like)+
4. Then under Volume Scheme: where it say's Current click-on the pointers in the blue box and select 1 Partition +(note: if selecting more than 1 now is the time to do any resizing)+
+Now the tricky part, where you select both the Format and Partition Scheme+
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http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html
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I recently converted to an iMac and CS6 from PC/CS5. In addition to the Mac OS missing some key file selection tools (like shift select for a range of files), I am having a big problem with thumbnail. I recently sent a file to be printed that was edited in CS6 on the iMac. The files were stored on an external hard drive connected direclty to the iMac. The file I got from the printer did not match the image I sent. I traced the problem to the fact that when using the Save-as function, the thumbnail was not updated.
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The problem with the thumbnails comes about when I have a jpeg, make changes to the jpeg, then save-as a file name that is already in the folder. For example, imagine you have a file called myfavorite.jpg and it is a picture of a flower. Later you find a jpeg of a bull dozer and try to save it to that same file as myfavorite.jpg. The OS asks you if you want to write over the existing file, and you say yes. when you go to that file in Finder, or try to open a file in bridge/cs6 which appears to also use finder, the thubmnail is still a picture of a flower. If you do a Quickview of the file the bull dozer pops up. Again, this is only when working on an external hard drive. I am starting to consider that maybe it is the format of the hard drive (FAT32).
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Backing up an external hard drive, one half for PC (FAT32), other for MAC?

Hey people, I've just bought a Lacie 1tb eternal hard drive which I would like to partition into two halves - in theory one half for the PC and the other half for the MAC, backing up all data held on the mac using Time Machine.
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If so, what is the best way to do it?
Would it be best to partition the PC half as FAT32 (MS DOS), and the other as MAC OS Extended (Journaled), on Disk Utility?
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Yes, you can do as you describe.
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
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5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
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Following your threat I realized it was time to have my hard drive changed. My iPod classic has a Samsung Model: HS081HA, 80gb/3600 rpm (real hard to get it open and check out!!!).
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er from the External file to a file in a second internal hard drive so I can then edit in Premier but it says there isn't enough
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Pam,
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I have an iomega hdd 160gb hard drive and need to move files larger than 4gb to my external hard drive. Hard drive is currently formatted to fat32. How in the world can I reformat this drive to the mac friendly hfs so that I can backup my files?? Any help would be appreciated.....

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Connect the drive, start up, launch Disk Utility, click to highlight the drive on the left side of the window, click the Erase tab over on the right side, name the volume, select Mac OS Extended for the format, check the box to install the OS 9 drivers, and click on the "Erase" button to execute the reformatting.
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Ntfs external hard drives and fat32 4gb flash drive not able to unmount

Hi everyone,
I have a bit of a headache here. I have two external hard drives, one is 1TB and the other is 500GB, both are NTFS format. I am using them on my macbook pro at this point because my windows 7 desktop appears to have crashed (still looking into the problem, just haven't had the time). I also have a 4GB flash drive that is fat32 format from that same windows desktop but I only use it for loading music on and putting it in the usb port of my stereo in my car. My problem at this point is that I am no longer able to unmount any of these by using disk utility. I was also having problems with both my external drives being read only until I came across Paragon ntfs for mac. That still messes up every now and then somehow and my drives go back to read only until I disable it and reboot, re-enable it and reboot again. Is there something that I am missing? I have been scouring the internet for last day or so trying anything and everthing to be able to get my ability to unmount disks back and nothing seems to work... Can anyone help?

Hi,
Following is the System Requirements from Western digital’s website.
Windows
Available USB port
Windows 2000/XP/Vista®
My Passport Essential 320GB USB 2.0 Hard Drives(WDMEB3200)
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=426
Yes, generally speaking, if an external drive or flash drive can be recognized by Windows XP, it should work in Windows Server 2003. However, there is no guarantee.
If possible, I recommend that you plug the “unrecognized” drive to some other Windows Server 2003 computers to test whether it works. If the issue continues, I suggest that you contact the vendor or the drive for more details.
By the way, what’s the version of Windows Server 2003 you used? Please update it to the latest service pack to check whether they works.
Best Regards,
Vincent Hu

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Hello,
I recently upgraded to Lion and since the upgrade the sharing of my FAT32 external hard drive no longer works when connecting from a windows machine. I used to use this external drive as a backup and now I cannot access it. I did attempt to reformat the drive as Mac Journaled and then the drive sharing worked fine but I need this drive to be portable and functional on all OS'.
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Mathieu

All of the issues you'd find would be in reference to just connecting to a Windows server or PC, not necessarily accessing an external drive.
I assume you want it in a cross-platform format so that you can disconnect it and use it on a Windows machine. Otherwise, the format is irrelevant.
Have you gone into Sharing and set it up to share out the drive specifically, not just turn on File Sharing.

Re: Need to format an internal hard drive into FAT32, how?

OK, this is no playstation forum but bear with me.
I bought a new 1 TB samsung internal HDD for my playstation 3 but it will not recognize it, probably because it is not pre-formatted into FAT32. I need to format this drive. I tried to put into an old laptop and do it but the connections were different. I put it into my Satellite A500-12W and thought I would use an old windows XP cd and find a "format" option instead of installation. However, the computer would not boot from the CD with the new hard drive in. I got the error message:
"PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: exiting Pxe rom"
The drive is brand new and should not be faulty. I had created Sattelite recovery discs before so I put number 1 in and then I reached the installation process but it seemed I had no option but to install the entire thing which is 4 DVDs and when I did it before I recall it being a days work (formatting often is with all the OK's that needs to be pressed) and I am working a lot these days, I would like to avoid making a full install just to be able to felete everything again and format it into FAT32. Since we are talking about the internal drive I can't just do it from windows since there is no windows on it....
The user manual has nothing useful to contribute, I have looked through setup looking for a "format" option but can't find one.
Can anybody help me? Can I for example enter MS-DOS without an operating system istalled and do it from there? All I want is an empty FAT32 HDD....

Hi
I assume you have formatted the HDD in FAT32 but you didnt create an partition.
You have to create an partition on the HDD and then you can format this in FAT32
Then the full 1TB should be accessible.
You can do this using tool like fat32format
Copy this fat32format on diskette or HDD. Its not big 24kb
Now you have to point to the fat32format.exe and have to start this application using command fat32format.exe
Then use command fat32format X: (X means the HDD drive in most cases its C)
Now you have to press Y for Yes
Other method:
Boot the notebook using an Linux Live CD like Knoppix
Such linux does not need to be installed on HDD.
Now Linux should be able to access the HDD and you could create an FAT32 partition on this HDD

Why can't my macbook pro / macbook air read FAT32 external hard-drive?

I have a USB external hard drive that's formatted as FAT32. It worked fine under Windows and Ubuntu Linux.
here is what it shows under ubuntu:
Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3a39bfa1
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/sdc1            2048   976773119   488385536    b W95 FAT32
As you can see its file system is FAT32, and as I understand FAT32 read/write is supported on all MACs.
However when I plug it to either a Macbook pro or a Macbook air, it said:
The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.
Why is this?

I have a USB external hard drive that's formatted as FAT32. It worked fine under Windows and Ubuntu Linux.
here is what it shows under ubuntu:
Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3a39bfa1
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/sdc1            2048   976773119   488385536    b W95 FAT32
As you can see its file system is FAT32, and as I understand FAT32 read/write is supported on all MACs.
However when I plug it to either a Macbook pro or a Macbook air, it said:
The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.
Why is this?

How to convert NTFS external hard drive to FAT32 without loosing data?

New mac user. How to convert NTFS external hard drive to FAT32 without loosing data?

You have to off load and backup then.
don't have backup drive ?
Get one.
Want another option? Paragon NTFS for OS X will provide write function to your drive, works with the most PC cases and drives (not all NTFS drivers for OS X do) and does so with fast I/O and low overhead.
Not sure about using Seagate GoFlex as I seem to recall a number of threads reporting problems.
Windows can do a convert -fs to NTFS just never tried the reverse from NTFS to FAT32 but I would not use FAT. I'd either erase and reload and use as Mac HFS Extended; or if you actually do need to use it with a PC user running Windows, the driver would be handy and better.
Or your PC w/ Windows there are HFS drivers for Windows to mount and WRITE to a Mac formatted drive under Windows. There MacDrive has more and better support feature set.

Is hard drive FAT32?

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