External Hard Drive - FAT32 or NTFS

fleetingmind

I have just bought a Toshiba 500gb 3.5 external hard-drive. I have been ripping my dvd's onto my hard drive to then move to this hard drive. To cut a long story short it wouldn't let me put the ISO files onto it and after some research found out that as my drive was FAT32 the files were too big (Oner 4gb).

Following these helpful instructions http://thundercloud.net/infoave/answers/external-hard-drives-ntfs.htm I have managed to change it to a NTFS and the files go on no problem now.

Questions i have if anyone can help: -
1. Why do Toshiba and Western Digital set default to FAT32 and not NTFS which most people prefer?
2. Is it safe to change from one to the other?
3. Can I change my other external drive from FAT32 to NTFS without losing all of the files on the drive?


Thank you for any help.

aliEnRIK

1 ~ pass
2 ~ yes
3 ~ move the files to the newly formatted NTSF one then format the drive

Exo

By formatting the drive to FAT32, then the external drive will be recognised by any Windows platform as soon as it is installed.
Not all Windows users may wish to have the NTFS format. Converting back to FAT32 may be difficult, especially if you wish a large FAT32 partition in excess of 32GB and are using XP.
As external drives are mainly used for backup, then FAT32 format does not have the same security implications of NTFS, so backups will be simpler.

You can use whichever file system you prefer.

aliEnRIK

If you need to format large sized drives in FAT 32 then use SWISSKNIFE
PS3s only allow FAT 32 external drives so I needed to format a 350 Gig drive

LeeSouthEast

My Western Digital MyBook came pre-formatted with NTFS. I think it depends a lot on which model you purchase - some appear preformatted for Mac's, some for XP and some are cross-platform (FAT32).

AHAR

1. FAT32 will be compatible with more systems e.g. Windows 95/98/ME. I don't know if it's still the case, but I think MacOS X can only read NTFS not write to it.
2. Yes, so long as it isn't a problem to lose the compatibility mentioned above.
3. I've never had a problem converting to NTFS with the files in place. Here's Microsoft's instructions

BTW if you want to format a drive larger than 32GB to FAT32 in future I recommend using this because although it's entirely possible, Windows (XP at least) won't allow you to do it.

Edit: I see aliEnRIK got in there first with the Swissknife. Ouch!

poppy10_2

fleetingmind wrote: »

Questions i have if anyone can help: -
1. Why do Toshiba and Western Digital set default to FAT32 and not NTFS which most people prefer?

FAT32 is vastly more compatible with more devices. Almost all USB thumb drives and external hard drives will come formatted to FAT32, as it is the only format than can be reliably read from and written to by Windows, Linux, Mac OS and most embedded devices.