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I have a working USB-3 bootable flash drive. The utility that created it (Macrium disk imager) created it as FAT32 (I didn't check it before... it is a 1TB flash drive)

My problem is... obviously... I need to copy a 400GB disk image file to the drive.... which FAT won't allow.

The point being to boot macrium from the flash drive and restore from the same source... (why? because with the image on another media, I keep getting errors related to "disk not found"/"unable to locate or open final image")

Can I convert it to NTFS without messing up its magic boot-ability?

Details about the path fwd would be helpful.

Jonesome Reinstate Monica
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2 Answers2

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No, you can't convert without messing up it's bootability.

You have to start over, and make a bootable drive with a different file system.

First, have another look at Macrium -- they support xFat now, maybe you have that in your version?

Otherwise, format as NTFS and make bootable. One way of doing that is described here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsclient/forum/all/bootable-usb-drive-using-ntfs-without-relying-on/dd9ab944-ca4f-4597-afeb-70a78649cadd

(use diskpart and bootsec)

user165568
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Here I assume you created the flash drive to be both BIOS and UEFI bootable. I also assume the flash drive is using a MBR partitioning scheme.

I downloaded a 30 day trial of Macrium, which I used to test this answer. I have the latest release of 64 bit Windows 10 installed.

Windows has a convert command which can convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS. In testing, using the convert command did not alter the ability for the drive to BIOS boot. I my case the drive was assigned the letter E: and the conversion was accomplished by entering the following command.

Note: To avoid errors, I needed to run the convert command from an Administrator Command Prompt window.

convert e: /fs:ntfs

Since firmware in my computer lacks a built in NTFS driver, I was unable to UEFI boot the converted drive. I refer to your next question for possible solutions to the UEFI boot problem.

David Anderson
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