Formatting to Fat32...

Does anyone know how to format an external hard drive to Fat32? It needs to be Fat32 in order to work with the ps3. I already googled it but the tutorials I read were two years old so I want a more recent tutorial since maybe things got easier. Thanks.

 

Goto:
Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk management -> Select the disk you want to format -> right click and "format" there you will select fat32

 

I went to control panel but I don't see administrative tools, BTW I'm using windows 7.

 

I use Win 7 too
Do you have it, View by: Large icons ?

 

OK I did everything you said but on my laptop format is grayed out so I can't click it, and on my other laptop it only has NTFS and exFat there is no option for Fat32.

 

You can also try to do this from Linux, ie GParted
GParted -- Welcome
Just be careful to choose the correct disk

 

I would suggest grabbing GParted and make it boot from a USB Pen.
But dont go formatting the internal HDD with it. xD

 

Well I formatted it to Fat32 using SwissKnife but its not recognizing that I have an external hard drive plugged in on the PS3, I'm gonna reformat it again but using GParted hopefully that will work.

 

You have to change its attributes to not cachable. I can't recall off the top of my head how to do that, but I will look later.

 

Ok thanks if you get the chance please post back, thanks everyone else for the help to.

I don't understand how to use GParted I downloaded the iso file and mounted it but after that I'm lost.

 

For gparted you will have to burn a CD or DVD and boot off it.

 

There is something wrong here. Hooking up a drive to a wintel machine, partitioning it, and formatting it to fat32 is childs play. 'Going Nuclear' and telling the OP to download a linux distro to take care of things is kind of drastic.

 

Fat32 format should be childs play but not always.. A friend of mine had the issue too, it didn't show up as an option to format it as FAT32.

Try this from Windows 7.

Plug in USB let windows detect it.

Right click on "computer" and select "manage".

Open Device manager and expand disk drives. You should see your USB drive there.

Right click and select properties.

Click the "policies" tab and choose "quick removal" and click "OK"

It should disconnect and reconnect to your device.

Now go to Windows Explorer (Win + E). Right click your USB drive and choose "Format".

FAT32 should now show up as a formattable option.

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*** OR ***

Go to "computer" and right click, choose manage

On the lower pane you should see your USB drive (where they are represented as rectangles). Right click it and format. Not sure if it gives you the option for FAT32 or not there though.

 

OK so I now have my external hard drive formatted to FAT32 but my PS3 doesn't recognize it , anyone have any experience setting up an external hard drive to the PS3?

 

Problem Fixed! , After working on it all day I finally figured out why the external hard drive didn't show up on the ps3. It was because the hard drive needed a password to access it so I decided to disable it and it worked. Finally! I was wondering why it didn't ask for a password but I blew it off until just right now.haha. Thanks everyone for the help.