Question Formatting a 8TB external HDD in FAT32

[deep33]

All, I am looking to buy a Seagate 8 to 14 TB HDD to rip and store my entire blu ray movie collection and HIRES music (SACDs, FLACs, blu-ray audio, etc). I have a relatively large collection that could easily fill up a 10 TB drive or similar. The issue is that my player will only accommodate a HDD formatted in FAT32. Is this a lost cause? How would i proceed with formatting a 8 TB drive in FAT32? Please help.

Best Regards,
Will

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, it is a lost cause.
The max volume size would be 32GB, and the max file size is 4GB.

 

[TerryLaze]

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm
(this is just the first result google spat out,there are other tools as well)
While you can format drives of several Tb in fat32 it's generally not a good idea , as you can read in the notes the normal upper limit for fat32 is 2Tb.

Also check with your player, it's pretty possible that it as well can't see large disks.
32Gb is an artificial limit put into windows just to promote the more professional windows versions.

 

[popatim]

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm
(this is just the first result google spat out,there are other tools as well)
While you can format drives of several Tb in fat32 it's generally not a good idea , as you can read in the notes the normal upper limit for fat32 is 2Tb.

Also check with your player, it's pretty possible that it as well can't see large disks.
32Gb is an artificial limit put into windows just to promote the more professional windows versions.

Very good advice! basically Windows wont, other OS's will (like linux) but over 2T is not recommended.

Does your player support Network drives? I'd go that route if you need that much space. Easier to make backups that way too.

 

[FFSteve81]

It's not without hope. I have successfully formatted seagate 5tb to Fat32. It's an external drive. I use it to watch video files on my PS3. I'm working on formatting an 8TB seagate drive. The newer WD external drives seem to be easier to format. The theoretical max size is actually 16TB.

 

[fzabkar]

If the player is limited to FAT32, then one would have to ask whether it is limited to MBR partitions. If so, then one could try Seagate's external drives which come preconfigured with MBR partitions, albeit with a 4KB sector size and NTFS file system. Even if you reformatted these drives for FAT32, you would then need to ask whether the player can deal with 4KB sectors.

 

[FFSteve81]

You can format with different sector sizes and choose between gpt and MBR with certain formatting tools. Deep33, which player do you intend to use?