Solve External Hard Drive Hassles with Convert.exe

[DarkAngel]

Solve External Hard Drive Hassles with Convert.exe

Windows 7 prefers hard disk drives that use the NTFS file system: Its integrated backup program cannot back up files from or to drives that use the older FAT32 file system. So, if you select a drive that uses FAT32 as the backup location, Windows 7 displays an error message. FAT32, a leftover from the days of Windows 98, works with both MacOS and Windows (which is why most external hard disks use this file system by default), but it lacks the features needed to fully support Windows 7 backup. Use Convert.exe to solve this problem.

Open a command-prompt session and use the following command to change your external hard disk's file system: convert x: /fs:ntfs (replace x with the actual drive letter of your external hard disk).

Convert.exe will check your external hard disk for errors, verify there's enough space for conversion, and then convert with abandon. While this theoretically will not destroy your data, we recommend you back up your files first.

[thelufias]

But don't do you back up on the same external drive 

[Jherrith]

I have nothing that runs a FAT32 file system so I am good.