I should format a 300 GB hard drive using FAT32 (so I can write it with both Windows and Linux) but Windows XP don't allow the format of fat32 partitions bigger than 32 GB..... Partition Magic (a Windows tool) doesn't support FAT32 partitions bigger than 200 GB......

Linux supports the "format" operation on so big FAT32 partitions (only 1 partition = 300 GB)?

While you could partition your harddrive with either Parition Magic or Linux to get around the 32GB format limit in XP, be aware that the reason for the 32GB limit in the first place has to do with the cluster sizes, or basically, the minimum amount of data written to the disk. For volumes above 32GB, it jumps from 16k->32k, which means that even if you only use 1kb in a cluster, it will take all 32kb of physical space. From a practical perspective, this means that you may end up wasting a lot of space on the harddrive.

http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT32.htm

If this doesn't matter to you, then I'd say "format away".

I usually use both Windows and Linux, so FAT32 is the most "compatible" file system, for both reads and writes form both Operating Systems

I know NTFS is better for Windows and the Linux file systems (ext3, reiserfs) are better for Linux, but if I need this partition for Windows and Linux, I think fat32 is the best choice......

if someone has ideas, please write here

thanks a lot to all!

Will QTParted do the trick? It's a partition magic clone. Try that if you have it

-A

do u have SP2 installed if yes, it might be able to, but what i read is that even if it does support u might have perfomance problems, better use a DM and create 2-3 partitions, or use the fdisk command under linux

Try mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/hdax

where hdax is your FAT32 partition.

beware of possible corruption if you write to the drive from Windows. It certainly is not tested by Microsoft by any means, although it's worth noting that most external drives lately come preformatted as Fat32.