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Converting FAT32 to NTFS. Is it 100% safe??

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My father bought his computer from work...It's a decent Pentium 4 with lots of software installed on it. After searching around the drive, I found it has Windows ME installed on it as well as Windows XP. He never uses the ME operating system. XP loads up by default when the computer boots. I was wondering if I could get any performance boost on the system by changing the file system to NTFS, considering WinXP was built for it.

I know NTFS has supposed "security" benefits but I really don't think those are meaningful, considering he has a very good antivirus + firewall, and all of the Windows security updates installed.

2 questions:

1. His machine seems to be running unnecessarily slow. I have already tweaked it as best I can (turning off flashy effects, etc) and it still seems sluggish. Does changing from FAT32 to NTFS give any performance boost? (This is the main reason I am considering it)

2. Are there any risks involved in the procedure of converting it? He has lots of programs (Word, etc) installed on the system and these will be lost forever if something goes wrong.

Any advice greatly appreciated.
 
I've done it via Partition Magic - it has always worked fine for me but there will always be a risk so you should have a backup first. As for performance I've not really used FAT32 with XP so don't know how much it would improve things.

In case you don't want to convert, why not post the full system specs so others can advise on potential bottlenecks?
 
You can convert FAT32 to NTFS by using standard feature for Windows XP - CONVERT utility.
I can't say smth about perfomance boost, but with NTFS operating system definitely works more stable plus the smaller cluster size allow you to effectively use the disk space
 
I have used convert.exe from the command line twice with no trouble.

NTFS is also better at protecting your data from crashes and corruption.

I would defrag the drive and run a spyware checker like ad aware first.
 
I'll leave the speed & security matters to other people who can give a longer reply, but to convert a drive, Start -> Run:

convert c: /fs:ntfs

... will convert the drive on the next reboot.
 
do a full surface scan 1st. full backup is even better.

ive run the stock xp convert proggie 5 or 6 times, no problems but there is always that slight chance something can go wrong.

as for performance increase i didnt really notice much when i was in the same situation.
 
To convert from FAT32 to NTFS will produce 512 byte clusters (instead of the standard 4KB). 512 byte clusters, while space efficient, are very slow.
 
Originally posted by: Rilex
To convert from FAT32 to NTFS will produce 512 byte clusters (instead of the standard 4KB). 512 byte clusters, while space efficient, are very slow.
Click to expand...

In XP you can SPECIFY the cluster size, 512 byte clusters do suck, but you can convert to 4k clusters easily.

You should definately delete the ME installation, edit the boot.ini file to remove the Windows ME choice from startup (google it) and convert to NTFS.
 
Upgraded a win98se system to XPhome, converted using built in convert utility, default cluster sizes; it didnt take very long and notice no appreciable difference in speed/access times etc.
 
To convert from FAT32 to NTFS will produce 512 byte clusters (instead of the standard 4KB). 512 byte clusters, while space efficient, are very slow.
Click to expand...

I ended up with 4K clusters both times and I don't remember specifying anything.
 
in my experience, I can't tell much performance differences. I'm sure there are in path lengths and filename lengths and such. I had windows 98 on my system, XP couldn't upgrade from that, so I left the filesystem intact, installed XP and did a convert to NTFS. All I can say is BF1942 runs slower because it's ram hungry and so is XP, so that's not a good indication. XP runs better on my machine than 98 ever did, but other than that, I really can't say. It wiped out my registry so I had to reinstall programs, but it spared my data, which was nice, since I'm in high school and have TONS of homework on it.
 
Default Cluster Sizes for NTFS Volumes with Windows XP:
7 MB?512 MB..........512 bytes
513 MB?1,024 MB....1 KB
1,025 MB?2 GB.......2 KB
2 GB-2 terabytes....4 KB

Prior to Windows XP, CONVERT always chose 512-byte clusters.
In Windows XP, CONVERT chooses the best cluster size (4K is the ideal).
 
Only reason not to do the Convert is if you are planning to dual boot with windows 98. NTFS is superior to Fat32. that is all you need to know or all that needs to be said about this. good luck
 
Originally posted by: blemoine
Only reason not to do the Convert is if you are planning to dual boot with windows 98. NTFS is superior to Fat32. that is all you need to know or all that needs to be said about this. good luck
Click to expand...

No, that's not all he needs to know. As previous posts have mentioned, he should know what cluster size he'll end up with if he does the conversion. I used the MS Windows converter to convert a FAT32 partition to NTFS and later discovered the drive had been formatted with a cluster size of 512K, which is generally not the best situation. And, I believe the Windows converter does not give the user the choice of specifying cluster size. Cluster size options are available when doing a fresh installation of Win XP and formatting and partitioning a drive, but not when using the converter.
 
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