AFAIK, Partition Magic will use the inbuilt CONVERT utility in W2K to do the FAT32-to-NTFS conversion on that 40 gigabyte partition. You will wind up with 512 byte clusters!!! Not a good scenario. If you can format the partition as NTFS from within another W2K installation (on the same machine, or on another machine) you can choose other allocation unit sizes. Of course, you'd have to reinstall everything. The default allocation unit size for all partitions >2gigs in W2K is 4,096 bytes, which is just about perfect for most uses. That's the largest allocation unit size that allows compression and encryption. And it also happens to be optimal performance-wise for most common situations. There are many conflicting opinions about what is the best cluster size for use in RAID arrays. I think it depends mostly upon the applications most used on the arrays, and not primarily on the hardware configuration and characteristics.
I don't use PM at all. Well, okay, I do use it sometimes when trying to rescue data for people who have used it (unwisely). I know, only from the reported experiences of others, that it is possible to use the utility wisely. I'm not certain if that includes RAID setups or not. I suspect it depends on just what maneuver you're planning to pull with the RAID setup.
Regards,
Jim
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