Users of multiple operating systems and computers in general are likely aware of the problems in disk, specifically file system, portability. A drive prepared and loaded with data on Linux is typically not accessible under Windows. This is because every operating system has it’s own native file system. At best, the secondary operating system has the capability, either natively or a 3rd party plugin, to read the non-native file system. At worst, well your data is isolated to the original operating system.
Users looking for maximum hard drive portability often resort to the FAT32 file system – a Microsoft file system format that dates back to the early days of Windows 95. It’s because of this lengthy historical background that most operating systems have some capacity to utilize the format. Eventually FAT32 was replaced by NTFS in Windows but backwards compatibility still exists to this day – with some limitations.
One caveat a power user may come across is the inability to format a drive or partition in FAT32 that is larger than 32GB. If you attempt to format a drive that meets this criteria – basically every drive in use today is larger than 32GB – you’ll quickly find that the user interface in Windows will not allow a FAT32 selection. NTFS is the only item in the file system drop-down.
As it turns out, this is merely a presentation layer limitation – if you resort to a command line DOS prompt the restriction is lifted.
Launch a Command Prompt with administrative rights.
Execute the command format /FS:FAT32 /q G: where G: is the appropriate drive letter on your system.
While there are logical rationales as to why you should choose NTFS over FAT32 – that isn’t always possible because of compatibility reasons. At least now you have an option!
