Formatting a large partition in FAT32 with Vista

Microsoft has imposed an artificial restriction in Windows Vista that prohibits formatting a disk partition of size greater than 32GB in Fat32. This is very annoying to say the least. For people like me, who would like to have the best of both the Windows world and the Linux world, dual boot is a cheap option (in comparison to buying two machines). It is common in dual boot machines to have a common drive formatted in Fat32, that can be shared between the two operating systems.

After a little googling, I found fat32format , a nifty tool that quickly formats a drive in Fat32. Simply download the zip file from here and unzip the contents to some folder on your local drive. Then open up a command prompt as Administrator (find command prompt under Run->All programs->Accessories and right click on command prompt and choose run as administrator). Then go to the directory where the unzipped fat32format.exe file exists and execute fat32format.exe .

Its not all doom and gloom with Vista. It does provide the functionality to resize partitions. This is very useful, if you are trying to install a second OS on an existing machine. To resize a partition, simply go to
Control panel-> Administrative tools -> Computer management
Navigate to the Disk Management under Storage in the left panel. You can simply right click on any of the drives and select "Shrink volume.." to resize a partition.

HongKong Visit

This was my first visit to Hong Kong and I was really pleasantly surprised. Everything was very organized, and very clean. It was almost like a bigger Singapore, but with more high risers. We traveled every where on the sub way (called MTR) it was really easy to get around and cheap. They had a smart card called the Octopus card that made cash handling a real breeze. It could be used in busses, MTRs and even most grocery shops. It saved me from returning home with a pocket full of HK coins that I may never use again.

What amazed us most was the way how in which people were really organized. People always walked on the left "lane" when walking inside the MTR station. The stations had elevators, which had been divided into two lanes with a white line in between. The left lane was for people who were lazy to climb the steps, while the right was for people who were in a hurry.

Our main goal was shopping, which was a bit of a disappointment. Everything was very expensive. We did find a lot of counterfeit clothes, but they weren't as cheap as you would find in Bangkok or Singapore. I had big aspirations of being able to buy some really cool electronic gadgets. However, the mp3 player in particular that I wanted to purchase was almost the same price as what I would get in New Zealand. So I was really disappointed.

I did manage to take some interesting photos while we were there: Link