How do I format a fat32 drive into an ntfs partition?

[Joe2683]

I have two hard drives, one is running windows xp and is on a ntfs format, while the other one is empty but is on fat32 format. I want to use the spare as extra hard drive space to hold my files, but I can't see the hard drive. How do I format my extra drive into the ntfs format, either by using my hard drive or alone.

 

[bruincal]

you do not have to format into NTFS for windows xp to see the drive. windows xp fully supports fat32. What you have to do though, is use the Disk Management in windows xp, and make the drive active in order to see it. I also have two hard drives, and i had to use disk management in xp so that it would show the second hard drive. its not that xp doesn't support the file system, it just doesn't show it for security reasons.

go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management, .. select the second hard drive FAT32 partition and right click .. choose Mark Partition as Active

after you do this, and open My Computer, you should be able to see the second hard drive .. you can leave as FAT32, or format the drive into NTFS by right clicking the drive and selecting Format

 

[hoihtah]

like bruincal said...
win xp sees both fat32's and ntfs.

one software that i've been liking more and more...
is Partition Magic.

this software takes care of storage managing lot better than built in managers.

 

[TheCorm]

Can anyone recommend any good sofyware for converting Fat 32 partitions to NTFS under Windows 2000 without losing the files, is there anything in there or should I just copy the files off, format as NTFS and copy them back on?

I tried PQmagic 7 before and is converted from FAT32 to RAW and I lost 30% of the data trying to sort it so I weren't impressed. :|

Corm

 

[AndyHui]

Would the How do I convert from FAT32 to NTFS FAQ help?

 

[hoihtah]

the corn...
that' quite interesting.
you've had data loss 'cause of format change?
i haven't run into one of those yet.

 

[TheCorm]

Yeah....PQ Magic reported it as NTFS but windows showed it as RAW and would not let me access it, just showed as a drive letter, scandisk found all sorts of bits of data and when I used a recovery program many of the Images on the driver had become corrupted.

AndyHui......sorry, I guess it's RTFFAQ time!!

Corm