Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of asugri
asugri

asked on

how to format a USB 2TB external drive in FAT32 format (from Windows or linux) to use on linux

Hi there,
Not so sure if I place this question in the right categoty.  If not, please let me know.

I got an usb external hard drive in NTFS format with size of 2TB.  I need to use it on linux, but linux needs the drive to be in FAT32 format.

How do I format that drive to FAT32 (2 TB capacitity) so that I can use it with linux?   I'm willing to consider commands or software on Windows or linux.

Best regards,

Reggie
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of jcparedes
jcparedes
Flag of Peru image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Avatar of Duncan Roe
Duncan Roe
Flag of Australia image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of asugri
asugri

ASKER

Thanks a lot for all the provided info.  To be honest, I'm not too good in linux.  So I tried the suggestion posted by JCPAREDES first.  guiformat.exe that I downloaded worked perfectly.  At this moment, I will use this 2TB drive in FAT32 first although there might be performance issue as you folks mentioned.

I'm willing to try other things on our linux box running SLES9 with filesystem ext3.  I did try mkdosfs but it was not easy for me.  "format /FS:FAT32 f:" on widows did not work (at least from Windows 7).   For linux commands to format 2TB with FAT32, providing more detail info would be apprecited.

Thanks again.