 Hello everybody! In this video, I'm going to tell you about FAT32 and DFS and XFAT file systems. How to convert a USB drive, a memory card or an external hard disk from one file system into another and back? Hello friends! If you need to recover deleted data, view or restore removed browse in history. Hetman software products will help you. Follow the link in the description. Download the necessary program for free. Install it and analyze the disk. The utility will show you the data you can recover, so you will be able to view it or get it back. In our channel and blog, you will find solutions to any problem, from installing an operating system or configuring it to fix impossible bugs and errors or optimize in mobile gadgets. Our specialists will answer any questions you ask in your comments under the videos or articles. If you see an error, the file is too big when copying a large file or a film, but the flash drive is big enough to copy the file, it happens because your USB drive has the FAT32 file system. Everyone knows that this system has one very big drawback – it doesn't support files larger than 4GB. What can you do to fix this problem? You just need to convert the device from FAT32 to NTFS. First of all, you have to know for sure which file system is in use. You can do it by going to this PC, right-clicking on the drive and selecting properties. After you've seen that your drive is running FAT32 system, you can start converting it. This operation doesn't need any additional software. All tools are already in your operating system. Right-click on the disk to be converted, select Format, specify NTFS as the desired file system and the cluster size if necessary. A cluster size is a minimal size that can be allocated for a file on the disk. For example, smaller files will take up less space on the disk with a smaller cluster size. The larger is the cluster size, the quicker are input-output operations. That is, read and write speeds are higher. With this in mind, if the disk is used for storing large files in videos, it makes sense to choose a larger cluster size from 32 kilobytes and more. If the disk will be used to transfer small files or documents, you should go for smaller cluster sizes from 4 kilobytes and less. If you are not sure which is better, just stick to default options. Set the volume label if necessary, the Format method and click Start. After that, you will see a warning that all data on this disk will be deleted and confirm your choice by clicking OK. That's all. Now your drive has the NTFS file system, but you must have noticed that in our case all the data was erased. To keep data out of converting, let's use another method with a command prompt. You can see there are some files on the disk and it's important to preserve them during the conversion. To do it, go to the command prompt as an administrator, enter the command cmd and then enter the following command. Convert space, drive letter, column, space, slash, FS, column, NTFS, and press Enter. Specify the volume label and press Enter again, and the converting process starts. The conversion is over. Let's open properties and you can see that the drive has been converted into NTFS and the data on the disk has been preserved. If you have important data on the disk, the first thing you should do is to back up it to another disk to prevent data loss in case of a failure or an error. After converting, such drive can become unavailable for other devices. That's why before converting it, you should decide for yourself why you need to change the file system and if the device you're going to use with the drive can support the new file system. You can find this information in the manual for your device. Converting without losing data is impossible if the flash drive is full because this process requires some free space. In this case, you'll have to delete something. You cannot convert a drive back from NTFS to FAD32 without losing data if you use Windows tools only. You'll have to use some additional software, and I recommend the Free Utility LMA NTFS to FAD32 converter. You will find the download link in the description. It's got an English-language interface, easy to use, and user-friendly. On the program select Conversion Type, click Next, select the disk, click Next, then Proceed and Yes to confirm the operation. And when it's over, you'll see the Windows saying the operation has been completed successfully. Okay. As you can see, the disk has been converted back into FAD32 and all the data was preserved. As you noticed, when I showed you the first method of converting with Windows tools, there was a third file system option – XFAD. It's a new file system by Microsoft managed primarily for flash drives. Basically, it's the same FAD32 but without some limitations, including the final size. However, it's got some disadvantages, too. Many home appliances and old phones will not recognize it, and the same happens to computers running Windows XP unless they have an additional patch installed. But later versions beginning with Windows 7 will not have any problems. If your flash memory card has the XFAD file system, add the device you want to use with doesn't support XFAD, and for some reason you can't convert the card with Windows built-in tools such problem usually strikes SD cards, use the free utility MMA partition assistant. You can find the download link in the description. To convert the card, right-click on it, Format Partition, select the file system and click OK. Then apply and proceed to start the process. When it's over, you'll see a window saying congratulations. All operations have been completed successfully. As you can see, the card now has the format you need, but the data is lost. Let's summarize. If you have a small card drive, format it into FAD32. XFAD is recommended for larger flash drives, and experts say that it's not so hard on the media and extends its lifespan in comparison with NDFS. Meanwhile, large external hard disks should be formatted into NDFS.