Install Windows XP on Large FAT32 Partitions

[Hirkani]

I have a 120GB hard drive which is a Fat32 drive and I want to install Windows XP on that. Now I think this might not directly work and for that what is the procedure for the same. Here I have 2 IDE hard drives a 40GB and a 80GB SATA again for a different pc. The first I wish to make 3 partitions there with different operating system. I wonder if I can just format it in FAT32 with 98 and run Windows XP on the same.

[DanielV]

You are aware that the maximum size limited to FAT32 installation is 32GB last. You might not able to create more partitions after that. So sometime it creates a issue when you try to create a 32GB or higher drive. For that you might need to convert the FAT16 to FAT32 for getting the same support. You can do that with Windows 98 boot disk. Then run the Fdisk and then choose the driver. Then reboot and try to run Windows installation.

[mesterio]

Of course you can install Windows XP on FAT 32, but you will not have access to some functionality specific to NTFS, data encryption and management of access rights to particular files. In addition, the NTFS is more efficient than FAT 32 so I'm not sure about such an approach. The only advantage might be able to access your data from Windows 98.

[Deep123]

It is possible that you can always access data on a FAT32 drive from Windows XP even if it is NTFS. Regarding the question of disks is different again: the format concerns only NTFS hard drive: you can always access to that are on your disks. Do not forget to install Windows 98 before installing Windows XP, you will simplify life for multiboot. Format the same from Windows 98 disc.

[Ernesto4]

FAT16 was very old model of hard drive sectors which were introduced to run Windows 98 and Windows 95. Right now it is needed that you must either have a hard drive with FAT32 or NTFS support to run much higher applications. The file system FAT is a 16 bit system, which means that it does not cluster can address more than 16 bits. So there were limitations on the driver partitioning.

[Enriqueta]

The file allocation table or FAT is a list of digital values, which allows the assignment to describe the cluster of a partition, that is the status of each cluster of the partition to which it belongs. The allocation table is actually a table in which each cell corresponds to a cluster. You can use any converter software for that or even convert the driver with the help of Disk Management and cmd.

[Enriquee]

Boot from Windows XP CD and dos support. If MS-DOS is not installed on your computer or if you are not allowed to start the computer in an MS-DOS in the Startup menu, see the Website of Windows to create a disk Start Windows 98 supports FAT32. After that you will need to run SMARTDrive. At the command prompt you will need to run the fdisk for installing Windows xp on the fat drive.