Disk Utility allows only FAT16

[Galimberti]

I have a Mac G4 laptop and I have bought a 250GB external hard drive. I would like to format it to FAT32 but I neither can not. well am trying to erase my external HD by choosing the option MS DOS, but when it is erased, in the shared section, I can share that between standard osx, osx extended, unformatted, or a final format mac I do not remember the name. and after, the DD is not recognized by my PC. I am using disk utility, but its allow only FAT 16. Please help.

[Raine]

Mac OS manages the disks FAT 16 and FAT 32. With regard to NTFS formatted disks, they are not supported Mac OS X until version 10.2. From version 10.3, they are borne but read-only.The only Windows/MS-DOS that can be used freely without use specialized utilities for large modern disks is the FAT 32. However, Mac OS X does not support volumes larger than 137 GB Note however that a disk of 250 GB, for example, may well be partitioned (with Partition Magic, for example), two volumes of 125 + MB disk is behaving normally on the Mac, even if you can not rename the volume. It's still a minor problem.

[Sam.D]

GParted is also a clone PartitionMagic. Based on GTK graphical interface tries to be as simple as possible. It recognizes and supports a large number of system files, including those of Microsoft. I used GParted (on the CD Knoppix 5.1.1) no problem to see more lower scores Windows XP (NTFS) of several gigabytes.

[ZeDaX]

I continually passing from one platform to another, when I formatted my harddisk, I did it on mac (OSX 10.2.9):
1. You branch your HDD (USB or firewire) (after you installed the driver is different if necessary)
2. Your Disc Utilities will open the application (/ Applications / Utilities /), it should detect your HDD.
3 You select all the disk drive (not partition the underlying) and tick the option to erase and format of the section in Volume " you the choice between:
Mac OS Extended Mac OS Extended, MS-DOS and Unix System. Selects the MS-Dos.
4. After you have chosen your format rules other option (although I think the manager OS 9 are not compatible with the system back) and you click on delete.
Check the steps.

[ThoMas321]

Once formatting completes you will see your harddisk appear on the desktop with the name you gave him will have on DiscUtility you if you select your partition that is in MS-DOS and therefore compatible with PCs. The PC when it format Fat 32. In general it detects automatically, but the worst installs the drivers if necessary. By cons format to thee under certain restrictions, in the matter of symbols used for naming your files, for instance. Although VFAT is clever, it does not address the limitations of FAT16. Thus, a new file system (and not a better support of the AFL as VFAT) was introduced with Windows 95. This file system, called FAT32 uses 32-bit values for the entries in the FAT. In reality only 28 bits are used because 4 bits are reserved.

[Tylerrr]

FAT32 is not compatible with versions of Windows prior to OEM Service Release 2. A system starting with a previous version will simply not that type of partition. Another remark, the disk management utilities running in 16 bits such as older versions of Norton Utilities can no longer function properly. In terms of performance, using a FAT32 system to the detriment of FAT16 provides in practice a slight performance gain of around 5%.

[Sydney_7]

Solution format for external USB hard drive when formatting plant was poorly done as to my STOREX Club MPIX-355: Formatting FAT32 partition of 32GB via the Windows manager. Deletion of these new partitions and create a partition with a size corresponding to the number of formatted partition and then deleted using Swissknife which is free but do not know that the quick format.