how to make fat32 partition in mac?

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Alright, but my mac os x or my windows wont be effected by doing this will it?? Im just very nervous for my mac.

anyone here who have tried doing what i wanna do??

@Detektiv-Pinky
What did u mean by this is the way to do it??

Is this guide good, or that other one with reinstalling everything??

Hi Baadshah, look in my previous post, I slightly expanded the guide from tongteh. This is the way to go.

You don't need to reinstall everything. OSX is able to resize your partition without any data-loss (that is actually exactly what the Bootcamp asisstant does). Make sure you only re-size the OSX partition and not the Vista-one.
(I think the disk utility is actually smart enough to not let you change the Vista partition and make your system partition too small to be usable. You should leave some white space in the system partition - blue means space taken up by your data.)
!!!However, make sure you do a Backup before!!!!

Partitioning is a very low-level process and if it gets interupted due to an external event such as power-outage or anything else it could leave your HD inaccessible, in which case a Backup comes in very handy.

If you feel not very confident doing this type of thing - practice it first on a external USB-Drive or USB-Stick. This way you can gain confidence in the process and try out different partitioning schemes and partition resizing without the risk of doing something stupid to your system partition.

 

[sickmacdoc]

Ok with all the insanity D) in this thread and all the directly conflicting opinions I have read in it, I began wondering if anyone had actually every tried the procedures they were recommending.

So to answer that for myself, I took some time today & put on my best MythBusters impression to try to simulate the OP's request and test its success or failure.

The "executive summary" version is:
The procedure of adding a third partition formatted as FAT 32 can be easily done totally inside Disk Utility- with one thing that would seem to be a deal-killer. Personally after doing this if I were just wanting more space to save "private" files, I would just increase the size of my BootCamp partition instead of the whole "adding another partition" routine!

While adding a third partition formatted as FAT32 is no problem at all as I suspected, the problem came down to the fact that after adding it successfully, Windows would not boot completely in spite of completing part of the boot procedure! Keep in mind that this is in spite of the fact (as you can see in the procedure listing below) that NO changes or movement of the BootCamp partition were done at all. Even more interesting is that when I went back into Disk Utility and removed the new third partion and resized the OSX partition back to its original size, Windows then booted successfully immediately- demonstrating that nothing on the BootCamp partition was damaged or changed in the least. Windows booting was not affected by trying to boot into safe mode or the "last known good configuration" mode and the boots failed at the same point after that screen.

To eliminate the chance of it being random, I repeated the entire procedure below a second time on another Mac with identical bad results. The limiting factor here is the fact that my Windows installations are XP on a NTFS partition, so I cannot determine if a Vista installation would act differently.

So there is more testing that could be done (different with Vista? installing Windows after the three partitions are created rather than as a BootCamp installation?), but I think I am done with it at this point and just wanted to share the results anyway.

The Procedure Used:

PLEASE NOTE: Trying the following procedure no matter what the user's understanding of OSX I feel would be suicidal without a full backup first as misterrredman and Detektiv-Pinkyso so correctly pointed out above! There is nothing at all technically difficult about it, but a system/power/timewarp glitch at any point could screw the whole drive up. Note that that would include a backup of the OSX partition as well as a backup of the BootCamp side with the free utility WinClone for the Mac.

Anyway, here is how it went down.

1. I updated my backups of the OSX and BootCamp partitions on a 1Tb hard drive.

2. I opened Disk Utility and selected the drive in Disk Utility and clicked the Partition tab, revealing the two existing partitions.

3. I clicked on the OSX partition and drug the lower right corner upwards to shrink it, revealing gray space that is now free for another partition.

4. I clicked on the "+" button at the bottom. That created a third partition using all the free space created in 3.

5. Clicked on the new partition to select it, then entered a name for it and selected MS-DOS (FAT) in the "Format:" pull down list.

6. I clicked "Apply". A summary of what was about to happen came up which said that my original OSX partition would be resized and another partition would be added. No changes would apply to the existing Boot Camp partition. In that window, click "Partition" and it will go off instituting the changes.

7. All done. Quit Disk Utility.

 

[jbg232]

If you already have the partition made and want to know how to format it to ntfs for windows vista (which I don't think has been discussed), you do that step during the installation of windows vista.

 

[tongteh]

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=KcyhLCb9aME

try following that video and if you still don't willing to try then please give up on this option.. this is starting to be some sort of joke, people gave you solution and yet you say you are uncertain.. if you really that uncertain, then don't do it.. (my piece of advise!!)

hopefully that video helps!

 

[sickmacdoc]

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=KcyhLCb9aME

try following that video and if you still don't willing to try then please give up on this option.. this is starting to be some sort of joke, people gave you solution and yet you say you are uncertain.. if you really that uncertain, then don't do it.. (my piece of advise!!)

hopefully that video helps!

That's a good little video for making an additional FAT32 partition on a drive, but keep in mind that the OP has Vista installed in a BootCamp partition already- and as I noted in my test just above, simply adding another Windows compatible partition on a drive with BootCamp already (at least with XP) does not allow the Windows installation to work any longer.

If it weren't for the BootCamp partition that the video does not have, it would be the perfect explanation of the simplicity of adding a FAT partition!

And I do agree with your "...some sort of joke..." as well- which I why I sat down and tried it twice before detailing the procedure!

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Ok with all the insanity D) in this thread and all the directly conflicting opinions I have read in it, I began wondering if anyone had actually every tried the procedures they were recommending.

So to answer that for myself, I took some time today & put on my best MythBusters impression to try to simulate the OP's request and test its success or failure.

The "executive summary" version is:
The procedure of adding a third partition formatted as FAT 32 can be easily done totally inside Disk Utility- with one thing that would seem to be a deal-killer. Personally after doing this if I were just wanting more space to save "private" files, I would just increase the size of my BootCamp partition instead of the whole "adding another partition" routine!

While adding a third partition formatted as FAT32 is no problem at all as I suspected, the problem came down to the fact that after adding it successfully, Windows would not boot completely in spite of completing part of the boot procedure! Keep in mind that this is in spite of the fact (as you can see in the procedure listing below) that NO changes or movement of the BootCamp partition were done at all. Even more interesting is that when I went back into Disk Utility and removed the new third partion and resized the OSX partition back to its original size, Windows then booted successfully immediately- demonstrating that nothing on the BootCamp partition was damaged or changed in the least. Windows booting was not affected by trying to boot into safe mode or the "last known good configuration" mode and the boots failed at the same point after that screen.

To eliminate the chance of it being random, I repeated the entire procedure below a second time on another Mac with identical bad results. The limiting factor here is the fact that my Windows installations are XP on a NTFS partition, so I cannot determine if a Vista installation would act differently.

So there is more testing that could be done (different with Vista? installing Windows after the three partitions are created rather than as a BootCamp installation?), but I think I am done with it at this point and just wanted to share the results anyway.

The Procedure Used:


Anyway, here is how it went down.

1. I updated my backups of the OSX and BootCamp partitions on a 1Tb hard drive.

2. I opened Disk Utility and selected the drive in Disk Utility and clicked the Partition tab, revealing the two existing partitions.

3. I clicked on the OSX partition and drug the lower right corner upwards to shrink it, revealing gray space that is now free for another partition.

4. I clicked on the "+" button at the bottom. That created a third partition using all the free space created in 3.

5. Clicked on the new partition to select it, then entered a name for it and selected MS-DOS (FAT) in the "Format:" pull down list.

6. I clicked "Apply". A summary of what was about to happen came up which said that my original OSX partition would be resized and another partition would be added. No changes would apply to the existing Boot Camp partition. In that window, click "Partition" and it will go off instituting the changes.

7. All done. Quit Disk Utility.

Thanks, for doing this thorough testing!

This really is an unfortunate result that you found. I guess it has something to do with the fact that Windows XP dislikes it to share a drive with other Operating Systems (can't speek for vista).

I think there is a chance that it might work with a fresh install of the Bootcamp partition, though. I would never, never repartion, or format the Harddrive from XP as some people are suggesting. This could really do harm to your OSX partition as well.

 

[misterredman]

Ok with all the insanity D) in this thread and all the directly conflicting opinions I have read in it, I began wondering if anyone had actually every tried the procedures they were recommending.

So to answer that for myself, I took some time today & put on my best MythBusters impression to try to simulate the OP's request and test its success or failure.

The "executive summary" version is:
The procedure of adding a third partition formatted as FAT 32 can be easily done totally inside Disk Utility- with one thing that would seem to be a deal-killer. Personally after doing this if I were just wanting more space to save "private" files, I would just increase the size of my BootCamp partition instead of the whole "adding another partition" routine!

While adding a third partition formatted as FAT32 is no problem at all as I suspected, the problem came down to the fact that after adding it successfully, Windows would not boot completely in spite of completing part of the boot procedure! Keep in mind that this is in spite of the fact (as you can see in the procedure listing below) that NO changes or movement of the BootCamp partition were done at all. Even more interesting is that when I went back into Disk Utility and removed the new third partion and resized the OSX partition back to its original size, Windows then booted successfully immediately- demonstrating that nothing on the BootCamp partition was damaged or changed in the least. Windows booting was not affected by trying to boot into safe mode or the "last known good configuration" mode and the boots failed at the same point after that screen.

To eliminate the chance of it being random, I repeated the entire procedure below a second time on another Mac with identical bad results. The limiting factor here is the fact that my Windows installations are XP on a NTFS partition, so I cannot determine if a Vista installation would act differently.

So there is more testing that could be done (different with Vista? installing Windows after the three partitions are created rather than as a BootCamp installation?), but I think I am done with it at this point and just wanted to share the results anyway.

The Procedure Used:


Anyway, here is how it went down.

1. I updated my backups of the OSX and BootCamp partitions on a 1Tb hard drive.

2. I opened Disk Utility and selected the drive in Disk Utility and clicked the Partition tab, revealing the two existing partitions.

3. I clicked on the OSX partition and drug the lower right corner upwards to shrink it, revealing gray space that is now free for another partition.

4. I clicked on the "+" button at the bottom. That created a third partition using all the free space created in 3.

5. Clicked on the new partition to select it, then entered a name for it and selected MS-DOS (FAT) in the "Format:" pull down list.

6. I clicked "Apply". A summary of what was about to happen came up which said that my original OSX partition would be resized and another partition would be added. No changes would apply to the existing Boot Camp partition. In that window, click "Partition" and it will go off instituting the changes.

7. All done. Quit Disk Utility.

Maybe this could make a difference:

http://refit.sourceforge.net/

 

[mrrish]

Alright, but my mac os x or my windows wont be effected by doing this will it?? Im just very nervous for my mac.

anyone here who have tried doing what i wanna do??

@Detektiv-Pinky
What did u mean by this is the way to do it??

Is this guide good, or that other one with reinstalling everything??

It's expected you will perform a full backup