Formatting External Hard drive to FAT32 to use with Airport

[Auk217]

Ok, so I just bought an Airport Extreme and I am trying to hook up my external hard drive. First off, I can't use the Airport Utility to format because I am using a windows xp computer, and the Utility says that it can not format with xp. So, currently, my external drive is formatted as NTFS and if I understand correctly, it must be FAT32 in order to be used on the wireless network. After doing some research, it seems weird that Apple would make it only possible to use the wireless network with a hard drive if it has the lesser of the two formats. I do not feel comfortable utimately downgrading my external drive to FAT32, but I do want to see it work on the network. So, does anyone know how I can go about reformatting my external drive to be FAT32 - or, does anyone know of a different method that I could use to keep my drive NTFS but still use the Airport Express?

 

[admiraldennis]

After doing some research, it seems weird that Apple would make it only possible to use the wireless network with a hard drive if it has the lesser of the two formats.

NTFS is a proprietary (closed) Microsoft filesystem. Mac OS X can read from, but not write to it.

Reverse-engineered open source drivers exist, but they are in their infancy and it would be completely inappropriate to include in a retail device.

So, does anyone know how I can go about reformatting my external drive to be FAT32

Back up the drive, format it to FAT32 either in Windows or Mac OS X.

FAT32 indeed sucks for many applications, and I'd highly recommend using HFS+ instead.