Reading NTFS with FAT & FAT32

[johnlog]

I was told this was discussed on Anandtech before but i missed it.

Someone on Anandtech told me over a network a FAT or FAT32 formatted HD can read an NTFS formatted hard drive over a network. I told that to a friend of mine and he came back with a FAQ from Microsoft which I will quote a portion of it here and then I would like some comments on can you or can't you?

"?There is one situation in which you might want to choose FAT or FAT32 as your file system. If it is necessary to have a computer that will sometimes run an earlier version of Windows and other times run Windows XP, you will need to have a FAT or FAT32 partition as the primary (or startup) partition on the hard disk. Most earlier versions of Windows cannot access a partition if it uses the latest version of NTFS. The two exceptions are Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 4 or later. Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 4 or later has access to partitions with the latest version of NTFS, but with some limitations: It cannot access files that have been stored using NTFS features that did not exist when Windows NT 4.0 was released.?

Is the above from Microsoft correct or not? :frown: or Or is that not for a network but on one individual computer?

 

[CQuinn]

<< over a network a FAT or FAT32 formatted HD can read an NTFS formatted hard drive >>



No, you are confusing two different ways of accessing data.

Over a network it doesn't matter what format the files are in on a given machine, because
your computer is not looking at the drive of the other machine - only the shared directories.
That is why your computer would be able to see files on UNIX/Linux, Netware, OS/2,
Macintosh, SUN, and other Server/Workstations on a network. Your computer is not
talking to the drive on the other computer... it is talking to the other computer to get
access to the information on the other drives. So the other computer handles the file
system and the handling of data is invisible to your machine.

The quote you gave only applies to the machine you are booting from, the issue it addresses is
not about network shares.

 

[johnlog]

CQuinn,

Thank you for your response to my note about FAT and NTFS compatibility over a network.

I had thought the shared directories, files, etc., could be read over a network but a friend of mine quoted a MS FAQ that we both mistook to mean also over an network they could not be read.

This is why Anandtech is so great we can ask a question and someone can come up with the answer.

Thank you.