Seagate FreeAgent Go

[rdhoverson]

Hello,
I just borrowed an external Seagate FreeAgent Go from a friend so I can temporarily store my data to it from a Playstation 3 Console, but it needs to be formatted as FAT32 for me to do it. It is currently NTSF and th eonly option it supplies is to change to exFAT. Is it possible for me to reformat this thing to FAT32 from a Windows XP desktop? If so, how do I do it?

RD Hoverson
rdhoverson@cox.net

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello, and welcome to Tom's Hardware!

You can reformat the external USB drive from the standard NTFS and use FAT 32, from Disk Management on a Win-XP desktop.
When you do anything stored on the external drive will be lost and irretrievable. Then when needed for regular computing, it should be formatted back to the NTFS standard.

If you were going to connect it by a USB connection cable, why not consider using a USB flash drive for temporary storage instead. The higher capacity ones are usually formatted with FAT-32, or you can easily format it with FAT-16 or FAT-32.

 

[fzabkar]

Windows XP cannot create a FAT32 partition that is larger than 32GB. To do this you need third party software such as the following:

http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm (fat32format)
http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/ (Fat32Formatter)

GUI version of fat32format:
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat.htm

Seagate also supplies DiscWizard which is an OEM version of Acronis True Image:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=DiscWizard&vgnextoid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Formatting a Large Drive Greater Than 32GB with a FAT32 File System Using Seagate DiscWizard [200895]:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=200895&NewLang=en

 

[rdhoverson]

Thank you for exposing me to the Disk Management Tool, Mr. VanKirk! And also reading the other reply received from "fzabkar", I see I should have also included some other facts. i only need to move about 60GB of data in a FAT32 format, while the Seagate FreeAgent Go I currently have is a drive with 320GB storage.

Nonetheless, I think this gives me good education to start with. (Formatting is new to me 100%. Heck, I only use PC's at my place of business and rarely at home even. So, my level of understanding on some technical verbiage, despite my college education can be embarrassing at times.)

Thanks so much!

 

[John_VanKirk]

You're welcome!

Low level disk commands can be arcane, and have to be used frequently to remember all the nuances and how to stay out of trouble. Formatting disks and preserving data is like brain surgery on a Disk Drive. We've all been there, made mistakes, lost data, so there's nothing wrong with asking other's for advice.