How to create big FAT32 partitions

Ok by looking the title of this thread you may wonder "Why should I need to create a FAT32 partition?"

Well that is because if you plan to install Linux on your pc, FAT 32 is the only file system that can be read/write by both the operating systems.

Today I have installed Ubuntu on my pc - which is a really great OS and you should try it for sure - and wanted to create a big partition (61GB) for sharing files with both the operating systems (firefox/thunderbird profiles, mysql dbs, apache's htdocs, etc.)

The bad thing is that windows XP don't like FAT 32 so much (maybe that's the Microsoft's way to competition...) so you need to use other tools in order to create one.

First I tried Partition Magic, which have helped in many cases in the past, but unfortunately not in this one as I got an unexpected error. Next was CMD -> format /FS:FAT32 e: which didn't worked as WinXP can format FAT 32 partitions of up to 4Gb(!)

And the third plan which is the actual solution to this problem(and BTW a very fast one), is mkdosfs which is actually a linux command ported for windows machines.

Anyway I posted this as a future reference and as it got me a few hours to find that solution so I guess others may benefit from that too :)

BTW as this thread is related to linux/windowsXP installations, I think you might also find useful this article, which is a guide on how to use the same profiles for Firefox and Thunderbird.

Prtition Magic will help you!

Once you are ready to create the partition, if a partition already exists, delete the partition.

Once no partitions are present on the computer, exit fdisk. Once back at the MS-DOS prompt, type fdisk to enter fdisk once again. The first fdisk screen should prompt about enabling large disk support, clicking YES to this will enable large disk support (FAT32). Once back in the fdisk main menu, create a primary partition.

(Well, this is at least one way to do it??� I???m sure there are easier and faster ways.)

Windows XP and up doesn???t let you create a FAT32 partition that???s bigger than 32GB. It can handle them, but not create them.
One obvious way to do it, is??� use Linux.

Install Linux in VMware. I used Slackware 12.0 on VMware Workstation 5.5.5.
Add a physical hard disk that uses the disk you???d like to partition. To figure out the exact disk number (i.e. PhysicalDisk5), use diskmgmt.msc.
If you don???t have patience to figure out how to make SCSI work in Linux (as I didn???t), change the disk to an IDE disk:
Close VMware and edit the .vmx and .vmdk files manually (with Notepad or any other editor).
In the .vmx file, remove the line scsi0.present = ???TRUE??�
In the .vmx file, change any occurrence of scsi0:0 to ide1:1 (this will make the disk IDE Secondary Slave ??? make sure you have a Secondary Master).
In the .vmdk file, change the line ddb.adapterType = ???lsilogic??� to ddb.adapterType = ???ide??�
Boot into Linux and login as root.
Run fdisk /dev/hdd (this assumes your HD is IDE Secondary Slave; otherwise, use the correct device name).
Press p to list partitions; delete them all by repeatedly using d; create one partition spanning the whole disk by pressing n and using the default for each question.
Change the type to FAT32 by pressing t, and for the partition type hex code, enter c
Make sure you did nothing wrong, and press w to write the partition table to the disk. This is irreversible!
Back in the root prompt, format the new FAT32 partition by using: mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/hdd1
That???s it ??? you now have a big FAT32 partition. Make sure you don???t mount it in both Windows and Linux at the same time.

Old existing is 160 GB with 32 GB in FAT32 and NTFS balance, wants to change the half / half. Just baught a new 500 GB and would like to have two partitions of FAT32 and NTFS 100 GB to 300 GB. The cluster size is not important at this time that storage is especially great photos.

hello
  I think that some standards is used to create big FAT32 partition because If a system complete that standards then we can do big FAT32 partitions But some of my seniors on this forum provide the detail information about this question.Thanks for that information.
Regards
standards