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WinXP on FAT32, Converting to NTFS a risky move?

A

Antoneo

Diamond Member
I currently have a laptop that has WindowsXP on a FAT32 formatted drive. My school installed WinXP on FAT32 god knows why.

I have consistently gotten seemingly random errors that cause the system to perform a scandisk upon bootup and a friendly "Windows has recovered from a fatal/serious error" message upon arriving at the desktop. Sometimes scandisk would have to "truncate invalid entries" and would fix the file system or something like that. ARG.

Well, would it be a risky move to try and convert the FAT32 drive to NTFS? I assume I would have to get into the recovery console to do the FAT32 to NTFS conversion. Correct me if I am wrong. This is possible though right (without having to do a real reformat, I remember that an NTFS to FAT32 requires all data to be wiped out)?

TIA for suggestions, ideas, comments...!
 
it is very easy to convert from fat32 to ntfs and no you don't have to use the recovery console. It is recommended that you format but not necessary. It's absolutely amazing what you'll learn from using the windows help file! This is what I came up with when I clicked start, then help...sigh...
"It is easy to convert partitions to NTFS. The Setup program makes conversion easy, whether your partitions used FAT, FAT32, or the older version of NTFS. This kind of conversion keeps your files intact (unlike formatting a partition). If you do not 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 convert from FAT or FAT32. Formatting a partition erases all data on the partition and allows you to start with a clean drive.
Whether a partition is formatted with NTFS or converted using the convert command, NTFS is the better choice of file system. For more information about Convert.exe, after completing Setup, click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then press ENTER. In the command window, type help convert and then press ENTER."
 
In case someone can't understand the help file you would click start, run and type "cmd" <enter>
Now type "convert c: /fs:ntfs" et voila! YOU HAVE NTFS NOW! Amazing!
 
I agree with what the others have said, but MAKE SURE you back up the system before the conversion if you have data on the drive that you cannot afford the lose!

I am not trying to scare you away from the conversion process, but it is a "major" overhaul and you should have a backup prior to going for it (if you have data that you need to protect).

 
Originally posted by: starwarsdad
I agree with what the others have said, but MAKE SURE you back up the system before the conversion if you have data on the drive that you cannot afford the lose!

I am not trying to scare you away from the conversion process, but it is a "major" overhaul and you should have a backup prior to going for it (if you have data that you need to protect).
Click to expand...

If he has data he would like to keep he would be making regular backups anyhow 😉
 
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