How can I disable the Dirty Bit on a FAT32 volume?

Please note that I DON'T need to disable CHKDSK at boot. What I need is to actually remove the Dirty Bit. I have an external drive that is formatted as FAT32 and I want to convert it to NTFS, but every time I run CONVERT I get a message saying that the disk has the Dirty Bit set and cannot be converted. CHKDSK /F does not solve the problem. I don't get any message asking me to run CHKDSK when I boot or connect the disk, which sort of proves that the disk is not actually dirty. (I always remove the disk using "Safely remove hardware").

Did you try chkdsk /x /f <drive letter of the external:>?

Another option is try the GUI method, right click the drive.

If you have the data on that drive backed up somewhere else you could just delete the partition and start over with a clean slate. Then creat a new partition and format it in NTFS.

Desslok said:

Did you try chkdsk /x /f <drive letter of the external:>?

Another option is try the GUI method, right click the drive.

Click to expand...

Yes of course I did. CHKDSK (in any syntax, in any form) doesn't do the trick.

alphanumeric said:

If you have the data on that drive backed up somewhere else you could just delete the partition and start over with a clean slate. Then creat a new partition and format it in NTFS.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I don't have an extra 1TB of free storage (give or take...) to backup everything on the drive.

Isn't there a way to simply clear the bit?

Bumping this because I'm in the same situation as this guy... Only mine is not an external but the actual drive containing the OS itself...