Thinking about converting to NTFS from FAT32 need some questions answered first please

[leeland]

Hello,
well I am leaning towards formatting and redoing my harddrives to NTFS from a FAT32 setup...I have some questions first though

1. How hard is it to format two drives to NTFS ? I have a 40 gig drive that I want as my C: drive and an 80 gig drive for storage...they are on the same IDE cable. will i have to do anything special or am I able to set them back up in windows set-up ? I am planning on FDISK'ing each drive and formatting them...then sticking in the Windows XP disk and going from there

2. I usually formatted through DOS FDISK just because that is what I always did....will windows XP Pro do it the same ?

3. Is it possible to Ghost an NTFS drive ? I hate reformatting all the time so I usually ghosted my C: drive

4. Is Acronis Image Maker any better than ghost at making images or will it make NTFS images ?


thanks in advance

leeland

 

[spyordie007]

1. How hard is it to format two drives to NTFS ? I have a 40 gig drive that I want as my C: drive and an 80 gig drive for storage...they are on the same IDE cable. will i have to do anything special or am I able to set them back up in windows set-up ? I am planning on FDISK'ing each drive and formatting them...then sticking in the Windows XP disk and going from there

FDISK will create the partitions however the old format.exe will only format as FAT. I would reccomend simply booting the system with the Win XP disk, the install routine has a section where you can partition and format disks. It doent matter that they are on the same cable, however keep in mind that data transfer is going to be somewhat slower if you are using both drives at the same time (such as copying from one drive to the other) because an IDE channel can only access a single device at a time.

2. I usually formatted through DOS FDISK just because that is what I always did....will windows XP Pro do it the same ?

See # 1; and BTW FDISK doesnt format, it only partitions.

3. Is it possible to Ghost an NTFS drive ? I hate reformatting all the time so I usually ghosted my C: drive

Yes, Ghost doesnt much care what the filesystem type is.

4. Is Acronis Image Maker any better than ghost at making images or will it make NTFS images ?

Not sure, I havent used Acronis's Image Maker before.

Good luck.

EDIT: spelling

 

[leeland]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

1. How hard is it to format two drives to NTFS ? I have a 40 gig drive that I want as my C: drive and an 80 gig drive for storage...they are on the same IDE cable. will i have to do anything special or am I able to set them back up in windows set-up ? I am planning on FDISK'ing each drive and formatting them...then sticking in the Windows XP disk and going from there

FDISK will create the partitions however the old format.exe will only format as FAT. I would reccomend simply booting the system with the Win XP disk, the install routine has a section where you can partition and format disks. It doent matter that they are on the same cable, however keep in mind that data transfer is going to be somewhat slower if you are using both drives at the same time (such as copying from one drive to the other) because an IDE channel can only access a single device at a time.

2. I usually formatted through DOS FDISK just because that is what I always did....will windows XP Pro do it the same ?

See # 1; and BTW FDISK doesnt format, it only partitions.

3. Is it possible to Ghost an NTFS drive ? I hate reformatting all the time so I usually ghosted my C: drive

Yes, Ghost doesnt much care what the filesystem type is.

4. Is Acronis Image Maker any better than ghost at making images or will it make NTFS images ?

Not sure, I havent used Acronis's Image Maker before.

Good luck.

EDIT: spelling

Thanks I think I will give it a try then....and I did make a mistake I met to say format instead of FDISK...


Is there anything else I would consider before I go ahead and do this...I am a little worried since I have never done this before...

thanks

leeland

 

[spyordie007]

The only real concern with converting from FAT to NTFS is if you are dual booting with another operating system (Windows 9x, Linux) because these other operating systems have limited (or no) support for NTFS. Linux can read NTFS but cannot write to it, and Windows 9.x cannot even read NTFS; there are of course ways to work around both of these limitations however just thought I would mention it.

I think you'll be just fine. NTFS is without a doubt better than FAT in just about every measurable way.

 

[leeland]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
The only real concern with converting from FAT to NTFS is if you are dual booting with another operating system (Windows 9x, Linux) because these other operating systems have limited (or no) support for NTFS. Linux can read NTFS but cannot write to it, and Windows 9.x cannot even read NTFS; there are of course ways to work around both of these limitations however just thought I would mention it.

I think you'll be just fine. NTFS is without a doubt better than FAT in just about every measurable way.

Thanks I guess I will take the NTFS Plung

 

[bwnv]

If you're already running XP or 2000, there is a utility that will convert from FAT to NTFS.
Just go to Help, and type in converting, and pick the NTFS topic.

 

[leeland]

Originally posted by: bwnv
If you're already running XP or 2000, there is a utility that will convert from FAT to NTFS.
Just go to Help, and type in converting, and pick the NTFS topic.

went to help and here is what it said,

If you don't need to keep your files intact and you have a FAT or FAT32 partition, it is recommended that you format the partition with NTFS rather than converting from FAT or FAT32. Formatting a partition erases all data on the partition and allows you to start fresh with a clean drive.


I am going to blow everything alway and repartition my drives as well so this wouldn't work so good I don't think....thanks anyways


leeland

 

[spyordie007]

good point, from the command prompt you can run:
convert c: /fs:ntfs

No need to reinstall for this.

 

[Sianath]

Spy is correct. There is no reason to format and reinstall if your only goal is to get your file system to NTFS. If you wanted to redo the partition structure in addition to changing the file system type, then you might go that route.

In addition to what was stated above with the command-line syntax, remember you will need to do this for each partition you want to change to NTFS. It's not disk-wide.

CONVERT <drive letter>: /fs:ntfs

If your partition is almost at full capacity you may not have enough room for the conversion. See the following article if you have any questions.

307881 HOW TO: Convert a FAT16 or FAT32 Volume to NTFS in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=307881