Changing the size of a FAT32 partition?

Question

The size of a FAT32 partition cannot be changed without activities associated with reformatting the disk. Explain why this is so.

Solution 1

False premise. Microsoft Windows for a long time provided no tool to resize partitions, and apparently the Disk Management tool from Windows 7 only supported NTFS. However, it is possible using 3rd-party tools such as GParted. Here's an example of how you would shrink a FAT32 partition:

A common method to do this is to boot off of a Linux live CD and run a resizing program. GParted provides a small live CD to do this. For more detailed instructions, see Ubuntu's guide.

Solution 2

The size of a partition on a FAT 32 disk cannot be changed without activities associated with reformatting the disk.

says who?

of course you can expand FAT32 partitions without 'reformatting' or data loss (e.g. with EASEUS Partition Master)

however, it is recommended to backup the drive before tampering with partition tables.

EASEUS Partition Master Home is freeware.

Comments

[quack quixote]

what tool are you trying to use that indicates you need to reformat the disk?

[quack quixote]

oh, and what kind of disk? standard hard-drive, or USB stick/memory card?

[Breakthrough]

A FAT32 partition can be resized non-destructively. Depending on how full the partition is, some data might have to be physically moved within the new partition boundary when shrinking it. If a given software tool does not support this operation, it's not uncommon for that tool to then exclaim "Cannot Resize FAT32 Partitions" which, although technically possible, is simply not supported by that one particular application.

[squirrel]

well EaseUS couldn't resize the fat32 partition on my usb stick

[Henrik Erlandsson]

All FAT removable devices show up as "unallocated", so there's nothing to resize... there really should be a tool for this, the "Partition Master" isn't it, though...

[Henrik Erlandsson]

People still need to do this, yet computers aren't sold with drives that take Live CDs anymore. "I have a vision of a Linux computer in every tech's home..."

[bernstein]

this tool does not detect linux partitions and will rewrite mdr/gpt without them. effectively deleting them (unless you know how to recover them...).

[Orphans]

For some reason, gparted says that it is unable to change the size of the FAT32 partition..