Why can't I get Win7 to format USB pen drive in FAT32 for a PS3 that actually works?

[Zak33]

This is all a bit silly.

I have a 4gig (and a 2gig for that matter) USB pendrive that I need to use on a PS3.

But using Win7 to format it to FAT32 just fails to work.

Last time I needed this, I used an old XP PC to do it and it worked immediately.

So.. what is wrong with my Win7 Pro installs that stops it making a FAT32 USB drive that my PS3 recognises?

It was back in 2011 that I last had this issue, when I told this bloke that only XP worked for me (and to keep the formatted size down, natch)

http://forums.hexus.net/audio-visual...ease-help.html

and still I cant get a Win7 PC to make a FAT32 usb pen drive that PS3 likes?

What is going wrong?

[scaryjim]

It's quite possible that Win 7 uses a slightly tweaked version of FAT32 - I know that MS tweaks NTFS with every new Windows (so an XP formatted NTFS drive won't be properly recognised on Win 2000, for instance). It'd be a pig if that's was true, but it's possible.

Could you set up a VM with Win XP on it to use for formatting the pen drive? A complete pain, I know, but it might be the least intrusive way of doing it... Or get a third-party partition management utility? Or a boot disk that'll format the drive for you? Maybe keep a GParted Live boot disk kicking around?

[Splash]

...or the HP USB key format tool?

[suedenim]

...or the HP USB key format tool?

This - worked perfectly on my 120GB HDD. Seen by PS3 - all of it!

[Zak33]

Splash.. that looks ideal
thank you

except it seems to be incomatible with Win7

[DDY]

Splash.. that looks ideal
thank you

except it seems to be incomatible with Win7

I've used it on Win 7 a few times, you need to run it as admin once installed.

Try this installer if the one at the HP site doesn't work:

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

EDIT: Just installed the HP Format tool from Extreme Overclocking on Win 8, works 100% but need to run as admin.

[Splash]

as DDY says, you need to run as administrator (as it's amending filesystems it requires these privileges). I've used it a number of times under WinVista and Win7 though, so should work fine for you. Also comes in handy for creating bootable keys for firmware upgrades and the like.

[Phaz0r18]

I've been looking for the answer for this for AGES.

THANK YOU !

[TRex]

Have you tried using the Disk Management in windows 7.
To go to Disk management use "diskmgmt.msc" in Run.