Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Boot Camp FAT partition query.

S

sourcemonkey

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 10, 2005
131
0
One step forward, two steps back.
I'm in the process of installing XP on my intel iMac. It appears that in order to format the partition with FAT, the partition cannot exceed 32gb. i selected the default 32gb partion with the latest boot camp, however it appears it partitioned it to the size of 32,492MB - that is, OVER 32gb. I have gone on to select FAT to format this partion despite it being slighly larger than 32GB.
1) is the excess 492MB not worth being concerned about?
2) could this cause any issues i should be concerned about?

Thanks in advance.
 
sourcemonkey said:
I'm in the process of installing XP on my intel iMac. It appears that in order to format the partition with FAT, the partition cannot exceed 32gb. i selected the default 32gb partion with the latest boot camp, however it appears it partitioned it to the size of 32,492MB - that is, OVER 32gb. I have gone on to select FAT to format this partion despite it being slighly larger than 32GB.
1) is the excess 492MB not worth being concerned about?
2) could this cause any issues i should be concerned about?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
I'm sure you'll be fine. But if you're still nervous, how about just formatting a smaller partition?
 
evilgEEk said:
I'm sure you'll be fine. But if you're still nervous, how about just formatting a smaller partition?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not sure of the potential consequences of the FAT partition exceeding 32gb. I'm cautious (paranoid?) by nature so i guess i may try to remove the partition and go through the motions again =/
I had expected that the boot camp default auto-partition of 32gb would have ensured that it did not exceed 32gb. Damn.
 
32GB (32x1024x1024x1024) is actually 32768MB (32768x1024x1024) so your partition is smaller than the maximum FAT32 size.
 
Told ya you'd be fine. ;)

That's why MacRumors is so great, there's always gonna be someone around that can get down to the nitty-gritty of your issue.

:D
 
Plus, if you could manually format the FAT32 partition using anything but the XP installer you will find that 32GB is an artificial limit imposed by MS with the purpose of pushing people in the direction of NTFS. 32 GB a tiny partition for FAT32 which can handle partitions up to 2 Terabytes.

I have a 300 GB external drive that is still FAT32 formatted and works with both Mac & PC. These is more risk of file system corruption with large FAT32 drives, so YMMV.

NTFS is far more robust, so is recommended unless you absolutely need read/write file access and can't use an external drive like a USB flash stick or network drive to move files around from Win32 to OS X and back.

B
 
evilgEEk said:
Told ya you'd be fine. ;)

That's why MacRumors is so great, there's always gonna be someone around that can get down to the nitty-gritty of your issue.

:D
Click to expand...

Yeah damnit, evilgeek's post delayed me from re-installing long enough to read plinden's post. Between you, you saved me 40+ minutes of my life. Thanks too, balham, that's interesting to know.
This community has always been a reason in itself to use Macs.:)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back