CONVERTING FAT16 TO FAT32

[Tetsuo]

Does anyone know how to change the FAT for a HDD (or O/S??) from FAT16 to FAT32???

I need to do this because of the following problem (lost space)

Any other suggestions appreciated. Thanks

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Having read some of the problems/replies, I hope someone can help with a problem I am having...

I have two HDD's running on a P133 on an Intel VX-Pro Board with Win95 OSR2. One HDD is a 4.1GB Maxtor IDE drive connected as the Primary Master, partioned into 3 fairly equal parts of 1.3GB. The Other is 9.1 Quantum AtlasII SCSI harddisk connected to a adaptec 1542C card. However on this drive I get only about 8GB in size (I have been told some space is lost anyway on large drives, and this size is correct). This SCSI drive is partitioned into 4x2GB drives.

My problem is that although my SCSI partions are 2GB in size, I have found I am missing space!!! Recently I copied a couple of CD's (CorelDraw 7) onto one of my partions expecting all three CDs of about 550MB (hence 3x550MB=1.65GB) to fit onto the parition, but found that two CDs took up 1.7GB instead of 1.1GB.

I found that when selecting the two copied CD directories in Win95, and right clicking 'Properties' the combined folder size is reported as 1.1GB, but when clicking on the partition drive letter and right clicking 'Properties' there is 1.7GB of reported data used instead of 1.1GB.

There is only one hidden/system file of a mere 32K, no other files etc on the drive (even the recycle bin has been set to use no space).

I found the same problem on all my drives/partitions i.e. one size is used but another grossly larger reported to be used.

This is especially highlighted in DOS when doing 'dir *.* /s' reports total file use as 1.1GB but doing 'chkdsk' on the same drive reports use as 1.7GB (but the reported free space is always the same as 0.3GB).

There are about 500 subdirectories but even these should not account for a 600MB approx. disk space loss!

Is this anything to do with only partial clusters being used (scandisk, and defrag show very little / NO partially used clusters).

Sorry to ramble like this, but this is the first time I've run out of space on a drive and would really like to know where the space is.

Would changing to FAT32 resolve this? How is this done?

Thanks.

[socalgal]

Tetsuo -

We ask that you do not duplicate posts in multiple forums, because this makes it difficult and confusing for the persons replying (and you) to follow what answers have been already given, and to know what is working, or not.

Thanks for your support.

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/002083.html

[dawgtuff]

Seems like you have a lot hardware running off your P133/Intel VX!If your OS is Win95B, you should be running FAT 32(32 bit)...Don't know what size ram your running,but it may help to change the Windows "virtual memory".Set it to 2 or 2.5 times the size of your ram.This may free up some of your HD space.

[This message has been edited by dawgtuff (edited 10-26-1999).]