I just got an external hard drive to backup all my data. By mistake I formatted it to NTSF, but in my computer I have two partitions (Linux and Windows), so I would like the new external USB hard drive to be back in FAT32. Is it possible to format the hard drive back to FAT32 without using Partition Magic (for I don't have it)? I don't care about losing data of the new hard drive, for it is completely empty, but I just wanted back in FAT32.

Thanks

Just reformat it, no special tools/software needed.

Yes, that's what I tried! However, now I don't have the option of FAT32 anymore. I'm using Disk Management of Windows XP, but there is no way I can reformat it in FAT32. Any idea?

You can format it as FAT32 from within linux. The reason you aren't able to in Windows is because the partition is bigger than 32 gigs (am I right?) XP won't let you make it FAT32 if its that big. You could split it into partitions so none are bigger than 32 gigs and then you could do it from within Windows. But I think your best bet if you need a large FAT32 partition is to just format it from Linux.

Yes, indeed I tried that and I can get partitions on FAT32 smaller than 32 Gb. Of course, I would like to have a single partition in my new external hard drive where to backup all data from Windows and Linux. However, I have never formatted a partition from Linux. To tell the truth I'm very neophite with Linux. Any help on how to format from Linux the external HD into FAT32?

I forgot to mention that I'm using a quite old kernel, Red Hat 9 (Shrike).