External hard drive and formatting

oldagetraveller

I'm considering purchasing a Seagate 320Gb external hard drive. However it would be formatted FAT32 and I have Win XP and would prefer NTFS. Is it possible or easy to change?
Also is £59 for this particular unit a good price and what alternatives are available, similar capacity and price, possibly better value?
Thanks.

Jzpop

It is very simple to add a disk in XP, then format it as NTFS. See -
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180207718

As for value, prices are changing (dropping) daily for hard drives at the moment. Just keep googling.

neilwoods

Wont get much cheaper that that, unless you can place that is using google checkout, and could save yourself an extra tenner.

Like from ebuyer, would be £56 after using google checkout (including delivery)

As for formatting, use the seagate help forum. They have this.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Why_does_my_drive_report_as_full_even_when_it_is_not_(when_copying_files_larger_than_4_GB)&vgnextoid=92d1781e73d5d010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

oldagetraveller

Thanks both. Looks fairly straightforward?
You're right Jzpop, prices have and are dropping but I don't want to keep hanging on and my HD fails in a couple of days, probably unlikely but better safe etc.!

Chippy_Minton

I have that drive and the first thing I did was to reformat it as NTFS using Disk Management, as stated in the links above. You could also use CONVERT from a command window.

Incidentally, for questions like this, in the first instance search for 'format' in XP's much-neglected built in help: Start - Help and Support, which leads you to Disk Management.