Re: Convert FAT32 to FAT16 with windows 98

[simonst@WellsFargo.COM]

FAT32 does not appear to be just a new partition type, which can coexist
with FAT16 & Linux partitions.
Both utilities I tried (Win95 FDISK & Maxtor Maxblast) required either all
FAT32 or no FAT32, and Linux FDISK was then unable to add any Linux/FAT16
partitions, once there was a FAT32 partition.

A comment in the PartitionMagic blurb
(www.powerquest.com/press/pm4ships.html) also seems to indicate that FAT32
takes over the entire hard drive:
                                               For those consumers
                                               who find themselves with a
FAT32 partition when they buy a
                                               new drive, PartitionMagic can
convert FAT32 partitions to
                                               FAT16 partitions so that
users can continue to use other
                                               operating systems and
utilities.

Does anyone know how to mix FAT32/FAT16/Linux partitions on a single hard
drive?

I want to do this because my 99.9%-full 1.2GB FAT16 partition expanded to
1.6GB when I copied it to a 2GB FAT16 partition(due to a larger cluster
size, I guess), but took only 800MB on a FAT32 partition.

>On 29-Mar-99 Ben Messinger wrote:
>>> Nick Rudd wrote:
>>>
>>> yes i have only windows 98 installed on my computer. I was wondering
>>> if there was any way that i could convert FAT 32 back into FAT16
>>> without reinstalling windows.
>>>
>>> Chris Smith
>>
>>
>> Partition Magic will convert from fat16 to fat32 or vice-versa. It does
>> it with a gui and is quite easy and in my experience safe. I have
>> converted a partition to fat32 and then back to fat16 at a later date
>> with no problems.
>>
>> One responder asked why would you not want to leave it fat32. My
>> experience is that lilo will not work on the mbr of a fat32 drive, and
>> also a fat32 drive is slower than the same drive with fat16. But that
>> doesn't really matter to me anymore - now _all_ my partitions are ext2
>> <g>.
>
>Lilo work well with fat32 because he dont need to handle the fat32
partition
>and because linux is installed on a ext2. fat32 dont change the mbr, just
the
>partition table and the fat of the partition. I use this setup from osr2
>(win95).
>
>Benoit Joly