fat 32 partition on win xp

[doug]

Here's the story

I have a small home network. 4 pcs 3 running xp pro and 1 running win 98se.

The win 98 machine is for my 5 year old son to play his games most of which
wont run properly on xp. Plus it keeps him off my pc. Tried the dual boot
thing and got sick of putting passwords everywhere to keep him off my login.
(Plus I could never get on my pc)

I installed a 10 gig hard drive on one xp machine for backing up all my data
and zip files. I would like to access the backed up files from the win 98
pc.

My thought is to create a 5 gig partition (using partition magic) on the win
xp machine's 10 gig hard drive and convert it to fat 32 so I can access it
from the win 98 pc.

Does anyone see a downside to this?

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.


Thanks

Doug

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

No downside, and you don't need to use FAT32 either. You can use NTFS, and I
would suggest that you do, as then you can restrict the files to "read only"
so that the Win98 user can access and use them, but not alter or delete
them. When you access the shared files on the shared volume, it is the
operating system on the machine being accessed that reads the files, not the
one on the machine doing the accessing. Win98's limitation in not reading
NTFS only applies to partitions or volumes on the machine itself, not on
machines that it is networked to. Same thing applies on a larger scale with
the internet, as many of the web servers you link to are running linux on
ext volumes - something that neither Win98 or WinXP can read natively.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[doug]

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You
This will make my life much simpler. I wasn't aware that the machine being
accessed reads the files. This reply will definatly be filed in my info
folder.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I installed a 10 gig hard drive on one xp machine for backing up all my data
and zip files. I would like to access the backed up files from the win 98
pc.

My thought is to create a 5 gig partition (using partition magic) on the win
xp machine's 10 gig hard drive and convert it to fat 32 so I can access it
from the win 98 pc.

You can set up a 5GB FAT 32 partition direct with PM (or if there is
free space direct with XP Disk management). The XP will happily work
with a mix of NTFS and FAT. But if you are backing up across a net,
there is no need for the file systems at opposite ends to be the same,
as long as the OS there can handle them. Its like having one office
using modern drop filing cabinets and another old style box files - you
can move a document from one to the other unchanged