WD External: FAT32?

Yeah I bought a 2.5" Western Digital 120GB external hard drive and it's in FAT32 file format but I want it to be NTFS. I already tried the DOS command to convert but it wouldn't allow it. Is there another way?

The older dos method was intended for internal drives only since there's no allowance or support for usb devices there. You will want to back things up to see the current Fat32 partition removed in order to see a fresh NTFS type created on it.

If you lack space on the one or more internal drive shrinking the current partition down as far as you can would allow space for a new second NTFS type partition for copying files from the first onto it. Once you have what you need from it copied to the new one you then simply delete the Fat32 one off the drve.

Go to my computer, right click the drive, and hit format. Then select NTSF when it asks.

If there's data on the drive copy it off first, reformatting the drive like that will destroy the data. Even if you can use the converter it might still erase it.

I had a friend get stuck since he never installed XP fresh but upgraded a 98 build leaving Fat32 as the primary. When Windows would freeze even in the F8 menu before reaching the safe mode /command prompt only option to manually start the system restore there. A repair install also keeps freezing up. Now it looks like another drive will replace that for data rescue and a total wipe for a fresh NTFS primary.

When first having upgraded to XP that would have been the time for the conversion to take place. For an external drive those use a slightly different method. SwissKnife is the tool found earlier for formatting external hard drives. http://www.compuapps.com/download/Sw...swissknife.htm

It won't let me. It's saying that I must quit any other disk utilities that are being used by the drive which is weird cause I have nothing like that running.

Does it still say that if you restart your computer with it being connected, and not copying any data to it? I've found that many times if you've recently accessed the drive or copied files to/from it, then it will say it's in use for quite some time.

After backing things up from it and restarting the system that will unload the activity being seen by explorer.exe. The SwissKnife can then be used for deletion of the current Fat32 for creating the new NTFS partition you want on it. WD also has their own knowledge base for partitioning and formatting external drives depending on the series seen at http://support.wdc.com/products/index.asp and http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....i=&p_topview=1

Ok I got it going. I just removed the external and plugged it back in. It's now reformatting. Thanks.

FAT32 sucks cause it only supports files up to 4GB or something. Plus NTFS is more secure.

Both Vista and XP alike run on NTFS 5.0. At one time every new version meant the older couldn't read what was on the newer version's partition.

The repair I have coming up for the build mentioned earlier is where XP was simply thrown onto the Fat32 primary on an internal drive. Was it due to a virus? bad ram? failing hard drive? I won't know until I boot up with a live distro to see the files and folders can be read and copied to the spare drive there. If the OS drive is still good and simply needs a wipe XP's native NTFS will find a home there fast.