About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

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castman
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About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

#1 Post by castman »

Is a known limitation that you can't format a pendrive into a FAT32 64 GB partition since MS built in this limitation into any NT 5.x+ OS.

I am saying this because I had received a smuggled KINGSTON pendrive with this capacity 4 Free :lol: . And it presented problems with file storage since I started to use it. I tryed 2 different tools to format it back to FAT32 that worked but kept on the problem.

I guess the pendrive is damaged and is not a limitation from the pendrive :P .

donald
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Re: About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

#2 Post by donald »

Could be damaged, could be a counterfeit.

Some software could be added to a low capacity flash-drive to make your computer say it has a higher capacity.

I would not trust a flash drives listed capacity unless I was sure it was real, even then I would test it once.

To determine its real capacity try reformatting to NTFS and then putting a few GB of data on it, next go to another machine and check to see if it will work.

I say format to NTFS the worst (AFAIK) format for flash drives because if your flash drive is real it might be greater than the limits on FAT formatting.

Fat 16 and Fat 32 are AFAIK the best formats for flash drives but each has file size limitations that might require you to break up a file into smaller pieces.

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Andrew Lee
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Re: About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

#3 Post by Andrew Lee »

Try using URL Flash Tools to check if it's truly 64GB. I suspect it's not.

I don't think Vista or Win7 has any problems reading FAT32 >= 64GB. They just refuse to format the drive.

castman
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Re: About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

#4 Post by castman »

Verifying capacity of drive: E:
Determining disk geometry...
Drive reports:
Cylinders : 8158
Media type : 0x0B (Removable media other than floppy.)
Tracks per cylinder: 255
Sectors per track : 63
Bytes per sector : 512
Total bytes (cylinders * tracks * sectors * bps): 67101834240 (63993 MB)
Determining partition information...
Drive reports:
Starting offset : 32256
Partition length : 67108831744 (63999 MB)
Hidden sectors : 63
Partition number : 1
Partition type : 0x00
Boot indicator : Inactive
Recognized partition: FALSE
Rewrite partition : FALSE
Verifying reported capacity...
Stage 1: Writing data...
+++ Unable to write data
Time taken for stage 1: 00:00:00

Operation failed to complete
I did as Andrew suggest me to do... and the program failed (And has no format option) :? .

donald
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Re: About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

#5 Post by donald »

If you find no other way to format it ...

Download a live Linux disk (Puppy is great) and burn it. These Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xbuntu are okay too.

Next format the flash-drive to a windows readable format using the live Linux CD (booting from it).

If Windows will not allow you to use it after formatting because of the size if, necessary you may try partitioning part of the drive (you will lose the use of one partition) thus making the drive small enough to let windows work on it.

You could try Partitioning into a Linux format for the second Partition then look into a Linux live install on a flash drive.

The formats for a live flash-drive are usually unreadable to Windows and thus ignored normally by windows.

All of this assumes the flash-drive is Real, and not defective.

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Andrew Lee
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Re: About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

#6 Post by Andrew Lee »

If you haven't tried it yet, format the drive using fat32format, or its GUI equivalent.

Alamaraminu
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Re: About Pendrives with FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GB

#7 Post by Alamaraminu »

HI

This file system, called FAT32 uses 32-bit values for the FAT entries. Since a FAT32 partition can contain many more clusters than a FAT16 partition, it is possible How to format my pendrive, Kingston 16 GB Show If u want to partitions in 32 gb pendrive there is a cd name partition magic upto that size. because larger than that size data may corrupt It can resized, partition and even format in any file format (like NTFS/ FAT/ FAT32)


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