IT Professionals

FAT32 Conversion Chaos

Posted by on Feb 5, 2008 | 7 Comments

Today, Andria asks:

I have Windows XP. One peculiar thing is that it didn’t have the
convert.exe program. I copied it from another machine and then ran it
at the prompt, using CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS.

I get the following message: “convert is not available for FAT32 drives”

Do you have any idea what is causing this? Do I need to run some
other program (Partition Magic or another one you might be able to
recommend) to convert my FAT32 file system to NTFS?

If it was me and that data had any kind of importance to me whatsoever, I would back it up before even attempting to do a conversion. As for the conversion itself, I have heard of this happening in some cases and for the most part, experts suggest you make a back-up of the data to another drive, then from your XP bootable CD, format the drive to NTFS.

Assuming this is not the hard drive that has your Windows installation on the other hand, you might simply use Partition Magic for the formating. But I tend to shy away from attempting a conversion of any sort as it is less preferred to a clean format of NTFS.

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!”

  • The Jetman

    Actually, CONVERT works pretty well. I’ve used it at least a dozen times successfully, altho I *always* hold my breath, bec even when one does a backup prior to conversion, there’s (the obvious) chance one could lose power abruptly and the drive is rendered worthless (that is, requiring the complete do-over one was trying to avoid in the 1st place.) To be sure, a complete do-over (reformat and reinstall) is the better way to go, but sometimes that simply isn’t an option.

    I actually arrived here in search of an answer (via GOOGLE) to the ‘CONVERT cannot convert FAT32 drives’ msg. I’ve initiated the CONVERT operation from XP itself, but I’d like to be able to do from my BartPE/WinPE rescue/repair disc, for efficiency’s sake. Apparently, some DLL is missing hence the error. In my case, I’m working from a known partial XP implementation (BartPE), but anyone else encountering this error has a truly busted XP and probably needs a repair reinstall anyway.

    Later….Jet

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/it/2008/02/05/fat32-conversion-chaos/ Muhammad saeed

    AoA

    its requested to you plz what can do change FAT system TO NTFS Drive please tell me very soon i am waiting your reply

    Thanks

    Best Regards

  • Sebastiaan Fehr

    Hey, I’m experiencing the same problem.

    I’m running a minimalistic windows install, so convert was not present, and I placed it within the system32 drive myself using a copy from another PC.

    The same message appeared.

    I took your advice and installed partition magic to try and convert the volume, but found that it only uses the sane program that wouldn’t work in the first place, so partition magic offers no solution.

    Just a slight variation of the same message again:

    “CONVERT is not availabe for FAT32 drives.
    Press any key to continue.”

  • Ben

    I can confirm that convert.exe is missing a dll.
    Ony copying the convert.exe is not enough.
    I ust copied the whole system32 folder and then convert works.

    I know, it’s a rude way to get things working, but than again. Ot works :-)

  • CW

    There is a missing dll file, I suspect something related to chkdsk, but at any rate extract/copy the files in question either from the i386 folder of the same service pack cd with the date 8/23/2001 to windows/system32 of the target machine.
    I drug these and the files with the date 8/17/2001 from a network share, leaving all files in use untouched.
    Convert now works on the target machine.

  • grmblj

    Coping only c*.dll files from c:windowssystem32 folder to location from where I was running convert.exe solved the “CONVERT is not available for FAT32 drives.” issue for me.

  • http://gxhs.ws -GaMeR X-

    grmblj, thanks, that worked A++