What does FDISK mean and how is it used? Also, how can I found out if my external hard drive is a FAT 32/16/12 format? Thanks!
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FDisk and FAT 32/16/12 format
(6 posts)FDISK usually refers to the disk partition management program in MS-DOS/Windows 9X.
There are far better disk partition management programs available now like Disk Management in Windows 2000/XP/Vista, the Linux program FDISK (Same name but works differently), GParted, etc.
For finding out the disk file system, just right click on the drive in Computer and click Properties.
There it will list the file system. If it just says FAT then it's probably FAT16 as I think FAT12 is a floppy disk only file system.
@raphoenix: I don't have any old Ghost or IBM books so I can't do that.
Edit: I just did a search a found out that FAT12 is not just floppies but "hard disk partitions smaller than about 16 MB" (Quote From: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd.....zes-c.html ).
I'm guessing that must be what you are refering to.
Not that it really matters much. I can't imagine anyone uses 16 MB hard drive partitions with FAT file systems any more.
@jd2066,
NO issue AND (NOT) a Bird Dog post for sure.
I dislike Bird Dogging as much as others do.
In earlier post you guessed the HD was maybe fat 16 and I figured you probably didn't mean it unless OP has some kind of small capacity HD. One can Force alot of Disk Geometry Changes using the Ghost command line with switches so I thought also I might have missed something myself on these New USB External HDs.
Thanks, No reply required.
Kindest Regards,
Rick P.♦:)
@raphoenix: I listed that because if I recall right, when you go to the drive properties, Windows will list FAT as the file system if it's FAT12 or FAT16 so you would have to guess which of the two versions it is. Windows will however list FAT32 correctly so there isn't an issue with that.
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