Storage Solutions Is it alright to convert HDD from NTFS to FAT32?

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sam9953

sam9953

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Hi guys I have a sony LED tv and love watching movies on it, but when I connect my seagate HDD it is not able to recognize it, probably because it is NTFS, so I want to convert it to FAT32, please can you tell me is it safe to convert my HDD to FAT32?
Will my tv read it?
Will it function the way it functions now?
Can I convert it without having to lose my data or formatting it?


Please guide me on this and how to convert?
 
First off, try plugging a FAT 32 formatted flash drive/pen drive and check if your display recognises it and that you are able to play the media from the drive. If it does, the file system of the drive is the issue. In which case, you could format your Seagate hard drive to FAT32 file format. But you will lose all the data so back up the data prior to formatting the drive.

Also realise that with the FAT32 format, you may not be able to transfer a file to the drive which occupies more than 4 GB so if you have bluray rips which occupy over 4 GB, FAT32 is out of question.

sam9953 said:
Will it function the way it functions now?
Click to expand...

What is it here?
 
Gannu said:
First off, try plugging a FAT 32 formatted flash drive/pen drive and check if your display recognises it and that you are able to play the media from the drive. If it does, the file system of the drive is the issue. In which case, you could format your Seagate hard drive to FAT32 file format. But you will lose all the data so back up the data prior to formatting the drive.

Also realise that with the FAT32 format, you may not be able to transfer a file to the drive which occupies more than 4 GB so if you have bluray rips which occupy over 4 GB, FAT32 is out of question.



What is it here?
Click to expand...

Yes actually all my pen drives fat32 work well, but only the 4 gb limitation isthe problem, anyway here it refers to the hdd itself. Plus i also heard that fat32 creates some partitions which might be some problem?
 
Not aware of any such partitions that the file system would make. Someone else could comment on that aspect.

If media playback is the issue, get a cheap media player such as the Asus O!Play Mini. Costs under 3.5k and plays all the formats from the drive.
 
Media player like Asus Omini not only solves the problem but provides variety of formats to play that too of any size.

+1 to Asus O mini
 
The Sony TV media player is pathetic anyways with very few formats supported, its better to get a media player like asus o mini and use it with your hard disk to play any kind of file.
 
First of all it cannot be done because currently there are no free applications to convert an NTFS to FAT32 file system but the vice versa is possible through windows itself. however there is one shareware application - Aomei ntfs to fat32 converter but IMO its expensive...

Secondly even if you purchase that software and convert your HDD from NTFS to FAT32, you will have to partition your harddrive wherein the maximum partition size is limited to 32GB. However you can have any number of partitions. But accessing all the partitions from your BRAVIA TV is a doubt.


And as pointed out by others, this file system suffers a limitation with respect to its file size, the max being 4 GB.

So my suggestion along with the others would be to go for a Media player ..

Hope i made it clear..
 
Guys thanks for the suggestion for the media player, yeah sure the formats are a big big problem and I hate half of my movies are not played by my TV.
Anyway incase I do buy this media player, will it read my HDD? so is it like I connect my HDD to the media player and then connect the media player to the TV, right?

I also did the conversion of HDD from NTFS to FAT32 and I was successful, yeah I do have the 4 GB limit but currently have hardly any file which is 4 GB and my HDD was 465 GB before the conversion and still it is 465 GB, so i don't see any partition of the HDD nor any reduction to 32 GB?
 
^Yup, you connect the HDD to media player then connect media player to TV. FAT32 is a useless format for a 500GB HDD due to the 4GB limit, you should have converted to exFAT which doesnt have any such limitations and is also supported by sony TV.
 
RS4 said:
^Yup, you connect the HDD to media player then connect media player to TV. FAT32 is a useless format for a 500GB HDD due to the 4GB limit, you should have converted to exFAT which doesnt have any such limitations and is also supported by sony TV.
Click to expand...

Huh? exFAT has no limitation of 4 GB? Are you sure mate? Really because that is the one I converted to .
 
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