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Xiol
Apprentice
Joined: 24 Jul 2003
Posts: 209
Location: UK
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 Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:02 pm Post subject: SOLVED: VFAT partition doesn't show up in Windows |
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Hello all.
I'm trying to transfer some data to Windows Vista. I formatted an 80GB drive I was previously using as EXT3 as VFAT (mkfs.vfat /dev/hdb1). The drive successfully mounts as a vfat drive under Linux, and I've copied data to it. However, when I boot to Windows the drive isn't showing up at all.
Now, I checked with cfdisk, and the partition type is still "Linux" - would this cause Windows to not see the drive even tho it's formatted as FAT? If I were to change the partition type in cfdisk, would that erase the data on that partition or not?
While I know that "apparently" you can't have FAT drives over 2GB, the other two FAT drives I have (30GB and 20GB) both show up under Windows and have their partition types set to W95 FAT32.
Any ideas?
Last edited by Xiol on Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:56 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54310
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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Xiol,
There are various versions of FAT. FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. The numbers indicate the number of bits used to index clusters.
Therefore, a FAT12 filesystem can have 4096 clusters, a FAT16 filesystem can have 64k clusters and FAT32 can have 4G clusters.
The maximum cluster size is 32kB which leads to a 2Gb filesystem for FAT16. FAT32 can support much larger filesystems although Windows has an artifical FAT32, 32Gb limit.
FAT12 is still used on floppies
If you change the partition type in the partition table with fdisk, you data will not be affected and it might help Vista.
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Xiol
Apprentice
Joined: 24 Jul 2003
Posts: 209
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm, will I have trouble accessing an 80GB FAT32 partition from within Windows then, or is it just the creation of such a large drive that they forbid?
EDIT: Nevermind, Windows reads it fine. Thanks for your help! |
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nixnut
Bodhisattva
Joined: 09 Apr 2004
Posts: 10974
Location: the dutch mountains
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| Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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Moved from Installing Gentoo to Other Things Gentoo.
Not about getting gentoo installed, so moved here.
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