What can cause Windows 7 to prevent me from formatting 500 GB (actually 465 GB) external USB disk as FAT32? No matter, what I did (Windows Explorer, Disk Management), the only options I was presented were: exFAT and NTFS. Why? 465 GB is far lower than FAT32 partition size limit, right?  I had to install and use 3rd party program. And using it there was absolutely no problems (no errors, no objections) in finishing this task. Formatting it as 465 GB FAT32 disk took less than 30 seconds.  What am I missing here? Why Windows 7 prevented me to format this disk as FAT32 using native system tools?
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I am trying to format an external hard disk to FAT32 (I need it to work with some hardware that expects it to be in FAT32). When I am trying to format it via Windows the only option get is to format it to NTFS.  When I am trying to format one of my own partitions (on the hard disk that is running the OS) I can do it only in NTFS while another partition my OS can format in both NTFS and FAT32.  What can cause such a behavior and how can I format the external hard disk to FAT32?
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I have a 1TB external hard drive of data that I have backed up from my main computer. To save space and give me the option of putting more data on this external HD, I'm considering compressing all of the data.  Windows 7 has the option of compressing a drive (right click on the drive -> Properties -> Compress drive to save space). Is it worth doing this type of compression vs. using something like 7zip to compress all of the contents of the disk? I don't plan on using the data any time soon, the drive is used solely as a back up for emergency situations.
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There is only one partition for both system files and personal data, which is C:. The other two partitions are for boot and for recovery.  Now I have two different reports on the size of C: on my Windows 7:   by clicking the property of C:, it shows 59.4 GB for "used space"; by selecting all contents (I have setup to view all hidden files and directories) under C: and viewing their property, it shows 46.9 GB for "size" and 47.6 GB for "size on disk".   Here are my questions:   I was wondering why the two reports are not the same, and where the difference comes? in the second way, why "size" and "size on disk" are different? What do they mean actually? What is the difference between them and "used space" in the first way?   Thanks in advance!
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After writing the FreeNAS IMG to a 16 GB USB flash drive, I can now only use 938 MB. I used the Win32 Disk Imager tool to write the IMG to the device. Then later, when I inserted the the USB drive into my Windows 7 computer it said that it had to be formatted, because it couldn't read it. I believe this is normal. So I formatted it inside Windows using the format option when prompted. So in Windows Explorer now, 938 MB is reported as capacity of this device.    Also, when i check the properties dialog box I can see the same numbers.    And when I check with diskmgmt.msc I can see there are several volumes I don't recognize and unallocated space of 12.79 GB.    Now, I have another 2 GB USB flash drive with the same problem. It too was used for FreeNAS, and it too has a reported capacity of only 938 MB. I thought it was broken there for a while, until I saw the same problem with this 16 GB model.  I tried using diskpart on the 2 GB model, and I saw that there were several partitions there (list partitions) just like on this one. So I used the clean option to try to wipe it, but that wiped off everything so it's totally useless now. I'm not sure how to rebuild it.  Is this a standard routine, like part of the whole "user experience", that whenever you make a bootable USB falsh drive with FreeNAS, it messes up your device? I am new to FreeNAS, so i wouldn't know. But it sure looks like it. Maybe it is in fact the format operation in Windows that messes things up... I don't know. It's not very nice.  How do I restore the capacity back to 16 GB-ish (14.9 GiB)?
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I have a 32 GB USB stick. I was in Mac (VMWare) putting some stuff on. Then accidentally removed the drive. I put it back in, and wanted to format it. Using disk utility, I chose 1 partition, it automatically filled in 312 GB and I just clicked format or whatever. It didn't take long, then I could see the progress bar hanging at "Waiting for device to reconnect". Nothing happened for a while so I ejected it. Now comes the problem:  In Disk Utility (Mac): No sign of the USB drive.  In Paragon Partition Manager (Windows): No sign of the USB drive.  In Disk Manager (Windows): I can see that it's there. But it says: Disk 1 Removable (D:) No Media. When I right click it, I can only assign drive letters to it. No way to format.  In diskpart (Windows): diskpart list will show me the following: Disk 1, Status: No Media, Total Size: 0 B. When I eject the drive, the disk 1 will disappear. So I know that it's this drive. If I type clean, it will say that "There is no media in the device".  In HDD Low Level Format Tool 4.25 (Windows): Doesn't detect it at all.  In Device Manager (Windows): It is detected as USB Mass Storage Device.  In Gparted (Linux): Doesn't detect it.  In HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.1.8 (Windows): It detects device as: "GENERIC USB Mass Storage 1.00 (0 MB) (D:)". When I press Start it gives me this error: "There is no media in the specified device"  In BIOS: Detected  In Spinrite (Live Boot): Doesn't detect it  Any help is appreciated.
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I've searched through several questions but didn't quite find anyone treating mine.  So, I have a 1TB external hard drive I use for backup purposes with only 1 NTFS partition. Today using DiskPart I formated that partition by mistake (who would have thought the disc count started in 0 and not in 1). The complete command I used was:  format recommended override quick label=Windows   So I performed a quick format, and from which I've read after a quick format it's possible to recover the data stored there. Anyway, as soon as I realized it wasn't the partition I wanted to format the one I specified I removed the access to my external drive to minimize possible damages.  Now, the MFT is the metadata part where the file name, creation date, access permissions and contents are registered; and it's mirrored too (so there's a copy of it somewhere in the disk). What I don't know is if a quick format erases that MFT mirror too, I hope not.  I'm running a program to recover files on it but I'll have to save the files to another location (once it's finished scanning, ~12 hours from now) and I don't quite have over 900GB of free storage where to put the data.  I would like to know if there's a program or procedure by which I could restore the old MFT in-place and have all the data that used to be in there accessible once again.  Any help or light you could shed on how to proceed or what programs to use is really appreciated.
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I wanted to take a sneak peek at Windows 7 so I thought of installing it. I have Windows Vista on my laptop which came pre-installed with it. I didn't want to mess with it.  So I created a partition (20 GB) in my USB external hard disk and tried to install Windows 7 on that partition. But when I booted from a Windows 7 DVD and selected the target partition on USB hard disk, it said it cannot be installed.  Is there any way to install Windows on an external USB hard disk?
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Before I start, don't lecture me on the fact that FAT32 is old and hasn't been updated for nearly 20 years. Right now I have sorted that. I am trying to install Ubuntu Linux onto a 64GB flash drive and it wants me to format it to one of the EXT file systems.  The problem is if I put the flash drive into a Windows PC, I can't use it. I also can't install the required software onto every Windows PC that I will use. When I tried to install it on FAT32 I got an error and there is no option for NTFS.  Does anyone know how I could do this? Maybe a Windows based tool? Thanks in advance.
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I am getting a 50% larger "Size on Disk" than the "Size" of files would lead me to expect, as linked. I have some idea from other posts that I have read about cluster size and small file allocation to clusters causing waste but would that account for 300GB extra space used/wasted?    Any ideas on how I could resolve this disparity and reduce the Size on Disk please?
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I understand why .  I have three NTFS-formatted drives with the same exact data on it. Their allocation unit is 4096 bytes. The number of files and folders as well as the size matches on all three.  However when I open the properties for the root folder of these mirrored drives, only on the first two have the Size on disk match though. On the third, it is slightly larger.  Is this a potential signal of file corruption, or a mere byproduct of the file system?
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I have 2 TB of data on an NTFS drive which I would like to convert to EXT4 filesystem.  My OS runs on a (comparatively) small 60GB SSD.  Is there any way to convert the filesystem, apart from backing up and reformatting?
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I want to format my USB stick to ext4 and just use as I would any other typical non-linux format drive (FAT32, exFAT, NTFS).   That is to say, I want to be able to plug the usb stick into any of my linux machines, and read/write to it without needing to adjust permissions, like doing chmod or chown stuff.  I would prefer to use GUI partition software like GParted, rather than command-line commands, though I welcome any solution!  I'm sure a post like this is duplicate flag heaven for some, but after browsing 6~10 SO and forum posts from google, I didn't find a simple solution to my question. Seemed like everything was about adjusting permissions on a per-user basis. Maybe you just cannot use ext4 drives with the same brainless convenience as NTFS.
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After moving to SSD I deleted the System Partition (100MB) from my previous drive, causing mass destruction.  I tried to delete the System Partition which windows 7 creates (on my previous disc as I moved to SSD) and when I tried to extend the main partition size to include the new Unallocated Space it asked me if I wanted to convert the disc to Dynamic.  I simply pressed yes and the partition simply disappeared into unallocated space. All of my family pictures / videos lost.  After reading an article on Microsoft they said to recreate the partition with the same exact size, so I tried to do that but it didn't work. I did not format the drive at all when I created partitions.  How can I possibly recover the partitions?  Thanks!
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The first 7GB of a 500GB NTFS partiton was accidentally overwritten with another file. Is it possible to recover some of the data in the remaining 493 GB of the NTFS volume? The partition table is intact. The executed command was:  dd if=file of=/dev/sdc1   Thanks  Edit: My question is different. I overwrite first 7GB of NTFS partition. Other question mostly deals with hardware failures or bad sectors.
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Why don't I have this option?    here's my disk layout  sudo fdisk -l  Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders, total 1250263728 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x5b53cc54     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1   *        2048      409599      203776    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2          409600  1153767021   576678711    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3      1216962560  1250050047    16543744    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4      1250050048  1250261679      105816    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)  Disk /dev/sdb: 4005 MB, 4005527552 bytes 32 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3880 cylinders, total 7823296 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x20d8782d     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sdb1   *          63     7822079     3911008+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
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I currently have a Windows 10 pen drive that isn't in use at the moment. I try to format the drive on disks, and the terminal using mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1 and all I get is;  mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24) mkfs.vfat: unable to open /dev/sdc1: Read-only file system   Is there a way to format this to any file system? I'd like to use it for other things.
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I recently bought a 750 GB 2.5" hard drive and put it in an external enclosure.  It has , but I use Windows 7, so I assumed I would be safe.   I decided to try exFAT, because I was enticed by the reduced overhead For "Allocation unit size" I selected "Default allocation size" Tried with "Quick Format" un-selected first, but it was taking too long, so I stopped and started over with "Quick Format" selected After drive was formatted, looking at the format options again shows that the "Allocation unit size" is 256 KB   The drive works fine, but I had a question about the difference between "Size" and "Size on disk."  On my 120 GB NTFS formatted internal hard drive, the difference is only 0.16%.  However, on my much larger, exFAT formatted external drive, the difference is 17.38%.  At that rate, the most I will fit on this 750 GB drive is 637 GB (with 0 free space).  What format options should I use to maximize usable disk space?  What impact will my current settings have on performance?  What impact will your recommended settings have on performance?  Format settings    Internal hard drive    External hard drive (with big space difference!)