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Format external drive in FAT32 using DOS

Open a command window by going to Start, then Run and typing in CMD.

command prompt

Now type in the following command at the prompt:

format /FS:FAT32 X:

Replace the letter X with the letter of your external hard drive in Windows. Windows will go ahead and begin formatting the drive in FAT32!

http://blog.ysoserius.com/2009/06/how-to-format-external-hard-drive-to.html

2 thoughts on “Format external drive in FAT32 using DOS

  1. Format the drive by going to the command prompt (Vista, right click on Command Prompt in Start>All Programs>Accessories and click “Run as Administrator”) and type in “format h: /FS:FAT32” (without the quotes). You may need to substitute your drive letter. (note this might not work on XP for a large hard drive – you may have to use a third-party formatting utility like like the HP Utility noted above. If you receive an error message stating that the drive does not exist or cannot be found, it is likely that Vista has formatted the drive to “NTFS”. Use the Disk Management screen to delete this partition again choosing the option to not format the partition then use the command line format command again.

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