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  1. Member
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    Hello,
    I have a portable hardrive that I usually plug to my DVD player (which has a USB port) to watch whatever video files I have on the drive.
    I rencently found out about the differences between formats FAT32 and NTSF. Since FAT32 doesn't allow files bigger than 4 GB, I converted my portable hardrive to NTSF.
    However, ever since I've done that, the portable drive is having trouble with my DVD player.
    I have a Philips DVP 5982, which used to work very well with the portable drive. But now that the drive is NTSF, the DVD player doesn't seem to be compatible with it.
    Have you guys ever heard about anything like this? Are there any solutions?
    Thanks a lot!

    Jorge
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  2. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    The solution is to format it back to FAT32, and live with smaller files.

    FAT32 is universally readable by Windows, Linux and Mac OSes. NTFS is not, and while most Linux boxes (including Mac OSX) can read from it, they cannot write to it without proprietary tools.

    I suspect that standalone playback is probably achieved through an embedded Linux kernel in the firmware, and this is limited in what it can read from. FAT32 is pretty much the current standard for these players, so if you want it to work the way it did, put it back the way it was.
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  3. Member
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    Thanks for such a quick reply, Guns1inger!
    This might sound stupid but... how can I convert it back to FAT32?
    I had a hell of a time converting it to NTSF. I tried a bunch of stuff before it worked. And I am not sure of how it finally worked...

    Could you please tell me the simplest way to do it? Let me mention that I am not a very experience user.
    Thanks again!
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  4. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    A freeware program called SwissKnife will do it very quickly and easily. That's what I used to convert a 320GB NTFS drive to FAT32 for a Philips 5990 player: http://www.compuapps.com/Download/swissknife/swissknife.htm

    Windows can only create 32GB partitions and has a 4GB filesize limitation. SwissKnife gets around most of that.
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  5. Go to My Computer, right click on the drive, and select Format. Specify FAT32. This will obliterate any files you have on the drive. So you may have to copy them off to somewhere else, format, then copy them back.
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  6. I do exactly the same as you and used swissknife (google) to format my drive .. I find the only problem is really that the 5982 usb port is only 1.1 rather than 2.0 and that does impact on some files especially mpeg's or high bitrate spike avi's. It is also possible to format your external drive into two or more partitions which can have different filing systems.. However the 5982 will only see and read from the first one, which of course has to be formatted to fat32.
    BTW the simplest way to convert any fat disk to NTFS is simply to type "CoNVERT X:NTFS"
    It is easy to convert partitions to NTFS. The Setup program makes conversion easy, whether your partitions used FAT, FAT32, or the older version of NTFS. This kind of conversion keeps your files intact (unlike formatting a partition). If you do not need to keep your files intact and you have a FAT or FAT32 partition, it is recommended that you format the partition with NTFS rather than convert from FAT or FAT32. Formatting a partition erases all data on the partition and allows you to start with a clean drive.
    Whether a partition is formatted with NTFS or converted using the convert command, NTFS is the better choice of file system. For more information about Convert.exe, after completing Setup, click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then press ENTER. In the command window, type help convert and then press ENTER.
    ALso Once you convert a drive or partition to NTFS, you cannot simply convert it back to FAT or FAT32. You will need to reformat the drive or partition which will erase all data including programs and personal files on the partition.
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  7. Member
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    Thanks a lot guys!
    I will try right away!
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