Best way to partition an HDD for FAT32?

[Okla]

We purchased a Western Digital (WD) Gold 8TB HDD to use in our external Disk Dock. I'd like to partition the HDD into (4) 2TB FAT32 partitions, but the Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.11.X and 10.12.X doesn't seem capable of this. IAW the WD website, FAT32 has a 4TB max partition limit, so I would think that this is possible. If anyone has any helpful suggestions, we would be much obliged for the assist.

Thank you for your time,
Okla

 

[Tech Junky]

There's a windows utility for exfat or use a program like hard disk manager from Paragon.

 

[sfx2000]

DiskUtil should be able to partition and format - exFAT is the recommended format if you need to move the volumes between mac and windows.

 

[Okla]

Even after following the written instructions from Western Digital -- which were written around Disk Utility in Mac OS X -- we couldn't get the WD 8TB HDD to parse the drive into four equal FAT32 partitions. Finally, after much trial and error, I employed iPartition to do the job...and, in case anyone is wondering, ex-FAT is not supported by the Asus RT-AX86U router. In addition, the Oppo player in our A/V/D setup will only work with the FAT32 file system, so there really wasn't much of a choice.

 

[sfx2000]

in case anyone is wondering, ex-FAT is not supported by the Asus RT-AX86U router.

In can you were wondering @Okla - you didn't say a thing about the AX86U - you asked for the best way to partition a WD 8TB drive using a Mac.

Thanks for wasting our time

 

[RMerlin]

If the drive is plugged to a router, then the filesystem doesn't matter - from the point of view of all clients, it's just SMB. Use ext4 then, which is the most reliable when plugged to a Linux device such as a router.

 

[Okla]

The problem I was experiencing when I started the thread was indeed finding something, other than the disk utilities found in Mac OS X or in Windows, to partition and format our 8TB HDD via the FAT32 file system. i didn't know about the Asus router part until I made the second post.

Speaking for myself, which is all any of us can really do, I appreciate the folks who tried to help. The second post came after a lot of research and frustrating trial and error and, quite honestly, it was supposed to be the final "solution post."

Thanks for not wasting anyone's time and have a great weekend...this ol' vet is signing off now...over and out.

 

[Tech9]

format our 8TB HDD via the FAT32 file system

Are you aware of FAT32 file size limit of 4GB? That means no good quality HD movies on this HDD.

For Windows:

MiniTool Partition Wizard | Best partition magic alternative for Windows PC and Server

As a partition magic alternative, MiniTool Partition Wizard is the latest partition manager software that can be used to manage partitions on Windows 11/10/8/7 and Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019.

www.partitionwizard.com