• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

upgrading FAT16 disk to FAT32 or NTFS under WinXP on laptop?

A

Azratax

Member
I recently got someone's old laptop at the "take it or leave it" pile at the local dump. The computer is a Celeron 366 with 64mb ram and a 4.5gb hdd, in a 2.00gb FAT16 and 2.5gb FAT32 partition. I immediately axed all the previous owner's files and installed winXP, which required freeing up over 1GB on drive C. As far as i can determine, a huge amount of space on drive C is being wasted by the FAT16 formatting. I recall being able to "upgrade" disks to FAT32 from FAT16 at some point in the past. Idealy, i would want to upgrade the first partition to NTFS, and, according to the windows help, delete the second partition and then extend the first partition into the unallocated space.
To summerize: laptop with winxp. Has 2.00GB fat16 and 2.5gb fat32 partitions on same drive
Best case would be to have one 4.5gb FAT32 or NTFS partition
Second best would be a 2.00GB FAT32 or NTFS partition and a 2.5GB one.

Anyone know if this is possible in my situation without booting off the cd, blowing everything away, and doing a clean install of XP?
Thanks
-Az
 
The only way to make everything into one partition without repartitioning and reformatting (read: losing all your data) is to use something like Partition Magic.

You should be able to convert both partitions by using the convert c: /FS:NTFS command.
 
Since you have recently just installed XP the best method would be to reformat/reinstall again.

During setup, when it asks which partition to install to, hit D this will allow you to delete all the partitions. Once deleted hit C to create a partition. It will ask how big you want the partition to be, say 100%. Pick your newly created partition and pick Format as NTFS when asked 😀
 
Woah! It converted!! I love you! You saved me a windows reinstall. (which is especialy hard on this laptop because each automated reboot causes it to hang, and it hangs at another point in the windows install as well. What do you expect from a laptop someone threw out?). Space before conversion: 465MB. Space after conversion 740MB. Wheee.
-Az
 
And it IS possible to extend drive C:
What i did:
1. From dos prompt: 'convert C:/FS:NTFS'This requires one to schedual the conversion for next reboot.
2. Reboot system. Conversion will run, and system will reboot again

3. From disk manager, verify that C: is now an NTFS drive. Delete the partition for drive D, (both the logical drive and extended partition) There should now be a block of "unallocated space" on the drive.

4. from dos prompt type:
'diskpart'

'list volume'
'select volume 1' (where 1 is replaced by the volume number of the drive you want to extend shown when you typed 'list volume')
'expand'

And like magic, the drive is extended.
-Az
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top