PS3 External HDD question help?

[robgavin1990]

Hello, i've got a 2tb external hdd and i have split it into two 1tb hdd, now that i've used one half an got about 400gb of stuff on it, could i undo the split and make it into a 2tb again without losing any of my stuff ?

also the one half is NTFS and the other is FAT32 and i wanna make it all into FAT32.

Please help,

Thanks

[barrybarryk]

any decent partition manager (or even the windows disk manager) can sort that out. just move everything to the partition you want to keep, delete the old partition and resize the new one.

or you can use some more advanced functions to "merge" the two partitions.

but I'd be prepared for the process to take a while if the data needs to be moved.

[SinnerShanky]

merge the two partitions.. Can be done using any partition manager.. Even windows will be able to do it.. I'm not sure if windows can extend the partition or not because if it can then the best thing would be to copy all the data to the partition you want to keep and then delete the other partition. Then you extend the partition you want to keep.. Done.. Hope i helped...!!

[barrybarryk]

windows can extend the partition, using the disk management console in computer management. It can't merge 2 partitions and only a hanful of applications will "merge" the 2 partitions if they have different file systems.

[SinnerShanky]

i am not sure if windows disk management extends the FAT32 partition to 2TB... Thats why i wrote it.. If it does, as barrybarryk says, then just do as he or i said and you will be good to go without having to search for and download other disk management software on the net...!!

[daveshooter]

Hello Bud, You didn't say what partition had the most files on? If most of your files are on the NTFS partition, and their larger than the fat32 threshold over 4 gigs, then you will have problems moving them to your new resized fat32 partition.

There are things to consider and stages to follow moving files around when resizing and repartitioning drives, and even more to consider going back from NTFS to FAT32.

I would recommend if you cant store your over 4 gig files on other media, other than the 2TB drive, then take a total count up of the size of space you need to store them files, and create a NTFS partition just for them on the 2TB drive, and then resize the rest of the drive to fat32. I don't recommend using windows, or any app within windows to do any low-level work on a fat32 drive, use Linux. and use windows to do the drag and drop copying, from partition to partition.

There are a number of ways to resize without loosing data, and the easer way is to copy everything to another media, and then resize that drive to fat32 2TB drive then copy the files back.

If your unable do that, than I would download this: gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php and burn it to CD, then disconnect all drives from your computer, other than your CD/DVD/BDVD,and the drive your resizing.

Then boot from gparted CD into Linux, and resize that way. If you are unable to move files over 4 gigs to other media, and are unsure on how to go about moving them around safely, then let us know.

[costocart]

yes it can be done. one of the ways to do it:

1) transfer all of your files into the ntfs partition
2) delete the unused partition (it becomes unallocated space)
3) expand the ntfs partition

I'm using easus partition manager.

[GrandpaHomer]

Yeah - the only problem is that OP wanted it the other way around

In principle - depending indeed on the size of the files (if any) currently present on the NTFS partition and in such cases also on hte order of the partitions it's possible to resize them but it mihgt involve a multiply copying / moving of the data between partitions. Might be faster, simplier and more secure to copy the whole content to another hard drive / PC and just format the hard drive from the scratch.

[bitsbubba]

I know Windows will turn fat32 into NTFS but I don't know about the other way around and I'm pretty sure not 2TB, as for other HDD managers I think Paragon Partition Manager will but not sure never tried.

[robgavin1990]

ok. i'm trying to go from NTFS to FAT32 for the full 2tb, i used a program called Fat32 Formatter 1.0 to make it first 1tb into fat32, what if i was to moved all my data from fat32 drive to the NTFS drive then shrink the NTFS drive to just the amount i need to keep my data safe.

then format the fat32 to NTFS then merge the shrinken an the formatted NTFS to one then reformat to fat43? do you think that will work ??

sorry if this is a bit confusing.