How can I format in Fat32 format this HDD - Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD SATA Hard Drive

Trying to format a large external USB or Firewire hard drive to the FAT32 file system? Can't do it? Only see an option for formatting the drive using the NTFS file format? Well if you answered yes any of those questions, then you're at the right place.
I was recently trying to format my 1 TB MyBook external hard drive in Windows XP to FAT32 instead of the overly forced-upon NTFS format. Why? Well because I needed to connect it to a NAS device and the NTFS permissions were causing the NAS not to be able to access the drive. Simple solution is to use FAT32, no security, no problems. Though it's sometimes useful to format a USB drive in NTFS format.
Also, formatting a drive in FAT or FAT32 will allow it to be read by other operating systems, such as Mac, Linux, and older versions of Windows such as Windows 98.
Unfortunately, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 will only format a removable drive in FAT32 if it's less than 32GB! Hmmm...that pretty much cuts out ALL modern external hard drives!
However, Windows can format a drive that is larger than 32GB in FAT32, but you have to use the DOS command prompt. However, if you have a drive that is 1TB or larger, you may still get an error saying "The volume is too big for FAT32".
In that case, you can use a free program called SwissKnife that will allow you to format an external hard drive that is up to 2TB in size. Let's go through both methods. In case you are having problems getting your external hard drive to show up in Windows, read my article on how to change the drive letter for an external drive in Windows.
Format external drive in FAT32 using DOSOpen a command window by going to Start, then Run and typing in CMD.

Now type in the following command at the prompt:

format /FS:FAT32 X:
Replace the letter X with the letter of your external hard drive in Windows. Windows will go ahead and begin formatting the drive in FAT32!

Format external hard drive in FAT32 using SwissKnifeSwissKnife is a nifty little program that is completely free and that you can use to format many types of external drives such as USB, Firewire, PCMIA, SATA and SCSI. You can also use it to create partitions on an external hard drive and it formats faster than Windows.

So next time you want to format a hard drive in FAT32 and Windows only gives you an option for NTFS, make sure to follow one of the two method mentioned above. Enjoy!

Open "My Computer".
Right-mouse click on the icon for the MyBook.
Choose 'FORMAT'.
Choose 'FAT32'.
Click OK to start the reformatting.

Using FAT32 these days on a current OS will half the
HDD storing capabilities especially if your unit uses'
a SATA HDD , FAT32 speed compared to NTFS is
less than half and the compression tool on NTFS
are more compact and compile better , also FAT32
is used to apply an operating system not for external
storage and if you are using your external storage HDD for holding an operating system to the HDD
will be suspectable to contracting viruses and
putting your data at risk , since the external HDD
is static and does not run through the OS registry

If your external HDD was used on a windows machine, it was probably formatted in the NTFS file format. Mac uses Fat32. The entire HDD has to be formatted to Fat32 for the Mac system to use.

fat32 is the only hdd format recognized by the ps3. if you have formatted the hdd to ntfs or other file system file convert it to fat32 for the hhd to be recognized by the ps3

You might have formatted your HDD to NTFS. There are two types of format that can be done on Windows OS one is NTFS which can only be read/write on Windows OS and FAT32 which would allow you to work with both Mac and Windows OS. You may want to reformat your HDD on a Windows based PC as FAT32 before working with your Mac. If it is a USB HDD you may just simply go to My Computer then right click on the drive letter assigned to the HDD then select "format" option.

My question would be are the movies in the right format. Just because they play on your computer does not mean they will play on you DVD.NTFS or FAT 32 would have no bearing on this. They are simply data per sector protocols and are related to magnetic storage devices.You may need the proper codec for you computer so it can make a DVD you player can play.

You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps. Before you begin, note that the FAT32 file system has size limitations. In this version of Windows, you cannot create a FAT32 partition greater than 32 gigabytes (GB). In addition, you cannot store a file larger than 4 GB on a FAT32 partition. For more information, see Comparing NTFS and FAT file systems.
Converting a hard disk partition or volume from NTFS to FAT32 requires that you reformat the partition, which will destroy any data on it. Be sure to back up any data you want to keep before you begin.

Using disk manager, try to delete the partition. Then start over again.

Hope that helps...

Geno

its probably not in FAT32 format