Formatting Seagate expansion portable drive to FAT32

Hi,
Just bought a 500GB USB powered drive to transfer files between PC and PS3.
Worked fine on the PC, not on the PS3.
Checked the Seagate help ... aha, it's preformatted as NTFS.
I'm very non-technical, but I know I need FAT32 for the PS3.
Tried to right-click on the drive in My Computer and reformat, but NTFS is the only option.
What's the easiest way to do this please?
Many thanks.

P.S. I have both XP and Vista on separate PC's if the instructions vary between them ... cheers.

 

Ok, scrap that, I found the FAT32format utility from Ridgecrop which worked fine.

 

There are several ways (of course rolleyes )

But for the non-techie using a partition manager program like "Easeus Partition Manager" or the old "Partition Magic 8" (if you could find a copy, someplace) would be your best bet. You can tell those programs that you want to format a particular drive or partition and also tell it what format you want to use.

For a HD, not in a USB enclosure, I just connect it to one of my PC's and boot up with my DOS Utilities disk and then partition and format the disk using the DOS FDISK and Format programs. It's slow, but highly effective.
It also tests and verifies every sector of the HD, unlike other programs.

But for simplicity, I keep the Partition Manager program on my main PC all the time just for such events as you mention.

I've found several Partition Manager programs for FREE, on "Program of the Day" and other on-line sources.

If you're in central FL just bring it over here and I'll format it for you.

Cheers Mate!
The Shadow :cool

 

I had never seen a program like that in a GUI format.
I've downloaded it myself, for evaluation.

Thank you,

the Shadow

 

Thanks for the reply shadow, appreciate your effort.
I followed the instructions to use FAT32format from the cmd line, so can't comment on the GUI bit
Would love to be in central FL, but I'm in darkest Lancashire, England ... a bit fed up after seeing my team (Blackpool) play poorly and lose today ... so getting that drive working ok is a bit of a plus!

 

I have many friends in England and Ireland that I've met over the internet but have never met, nor will I.
I'm constantly sending them one little program or another. Usually little utilities or batch files.

The little Fat32 formatting program that I just downloaded did start up OK, but said it was going to take an hour and a half to do a 200 gig drive. It's really slow over a USB interface.
I stopped that process and did the same process with Easeus Partition Manager and it took all of ten seconds to complete.

Thanks for your feedback. Much Appreciated.

The Shadow :cool

 

Cheers Shadow ... weird about the program though ... when I ran it via the cmd prompt, it formatted the 500GB in seconds via USB. :confused

 

would it matter if i had bought the same one but without the USB powered one meaning the electric one?? im wanting to format it to save some movies on because im starting to run out of space on my ps3.. also would it matter if one is 8mb buffer or 16 mb buffer?? im not wanting to really watch any HD videos but just mainly avi files but i guess scratch that my music videos are HD but they are only 100 to 200 mb files.. let me know so i know which one i should buy i already have the 500gb one with electric but was curious about the USB powered one