Unable to Process FAT32

[gnulab]

Hi,

My laptop is experiencing problem with FAT32.

Formatting a partition of my HDD with FAT32 file system, it will not complete the process. Error message shown is "unable to complete the process".

Consequently, all my thumb drives that were formatted with fat32 (which is the common file system here), I cannot read them.

I'm using windows version 10.0.16299.248

I'd disabled malwarebytes, avast anti virus, and no help there either.


Henry

 

[Tim Locke]

Why? W10 running on a NTFS formatted system can read/write FAT32 thumb drives with no problem...in fact that is the normal way.

 

[Saltgrass]

The size of the drive can be important. Win 10 will not format a drive with FAT 32 larger than a 32 GB partition.

My new 200 GB SD cards came with the exFAT partitioning.

 

[Bighorn]

I use either a GPARTED LiveCD [bootable], a Linux LiveDVD [bootable] which includes GPARTED or my Linux Mint computer to partition and format drives over 32GB as desired with FAT32, exFAT being choices. I have a 250GB 2.5" drive formatted as FAT32 for use with Mac OS X computers in transferring data files to a Windows computer. Windows can read the larger FAT32 drives, as mentioned just cannot create them. FAT32 also has a limit of 4GB single-file size while exFAT and NTFS don't. My year-old 4TB USB HDD came formatted as exFAT.

 

[gnulab]

Just got the time to reply.
The size of the usb flash drive is only 8GB formatted with FAT32 and Windows 10 fails to read the drive.

And of course the partition that I'm trying to format is only 3GB, but the Disk Manager won't complete the format process.

Is there a service that has connection with processing FAT32?


Thank you.

 

[Bighorn]

Formatting a partition of my HDD with FAT32 file system, it will not complete the process. Error message shown is "unable to complete the process".

Consequently, all my thumb drives that were formatted with fat32 (which is the common file system here), I cannot read them.

Have you checked the USB drives on other computers to see if your computer has hardware issues?
FAT32, FAT, NTFS, exFAT are the formatting of the drives used by a program such as an Operating System like Windows, Mac OS X/macOS, Linux, etc. Formatting of the HDD should have no effect on formatting of the USB drives if Windows is otherwise working properly.
It is also possible to download the .iso file for GPARTED to any computer to create a bootable CD, it's Linux based and can manage drive partitioning followed by formatting, also useful for cleaning a drive to put it back to its as-shipped condition.
For me the main reason for using NTFS or exFAT on a drive or partition is the ability to handle 4GB files, FAT32 can't. Windows can't create or format partitions over 32GB as FAT32 but I have used GPARTED to create and format a 500GB drive as FAT32.
As for "(which is the common file system here)", FAT32 has been around quite awhile, I recall since the mid to late 1990s when a partition limit with MS-DOS 5.x and FAT16 was somewhere around 504MB, always had to have a second small partition on the 540MB HDDs that had come out.