NTFS - FAT32 MIX OK?

[Ray]

Running XP Home SP2 with a 80 GB internal drive and a 60 GB Acom external
drive for backup purposes - and both to these are NTSF format. Just added a
Western Digital 160 GB drive to expand backup capability and archival
purposes and this drive arrived with FAT32 format. Does the different format
cause any problems swapping data back and forth? And if so, how do I go
about formatting the FAT32 drive to the NTSF format. Appreciate any guidance
you may offer.

 

[Guest]

Go to my computer,R.click on the hd,select,format.Follow the wizard,it should
automatically format in ntfs,you could run in FAT32 but its an outdated file
system.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Running XP Home SP2 with a 80 GB internal drive and a 60 GB Acom external
drive for backup purposes - and both to these are NTSF format. Just added a
Western Digital 160 GB drive to expand backup capability and archival
purposes and this drive arrived with FAT32 format. Does the different format
cause any problems swapping data back and forth? And if so, how do I go
about formatting the FAT32 drive to the NTSF format. Appreciate any guidance
you may offer.

WinXP can read FAT12 (the file system used on 3.5" diskettes),
FAT16, FAT32, CDFS (the file system used on most CDs), and NTFS with
equal facility. Further, the file system on any one disk/partition or
diskette has absolutely no affect upon the operating system's ability to
read other compatible file systems on other disks/partitions.

Personally, though, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is
an option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, and a lot of wasted hard drive space
on volumes larger than 8 Gb in size. But your computing needs may vary,
and there is no hard and fast answer.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by Alex Nichol in the
article here:

FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfs.htm

Somewhat more technical information is here:

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314463

Choosing Between File Systems
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

NTFS file system
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

You can safely convert your current hard drive to NTFS whenever
desired, without having to format the partition and reinstall
everything. As always when performing any serious changes, back up any
important data before proceeding, just in case. A little advance
preparation is also strongly recommended, so you can avoid any
performance hits caused by the default cluster size:

Converting FAT32 to NTFS in Windows
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm


--

Bruce Chambers

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[Ron Martell]

Running XP Home SP2 with a 80 GB internal drive and a 60 GB Acom external
drive for backup purposes - and both to these are NTSF format. Just added a
Western Digital 160 GB drive to expand backup capability and archival
purposes and this drive arrived with FAT32 format. Does the different format
cause any problems swapping data back and forth? And if so, how do I go
about formatting the FAT32 drive to the NTSF format. Appreciate any guidance
you may offer.

There is no problem in having mixed NTFS and FAT32 drives installed on
a Windows XP computer. If a hard drive is split into 2 or more
partitions then these can also be mixed between NTFS and FAT32.

With a 160 gb drive I would suggest that NTFS will be more efficient
and effective than FAT32 as there are some issues with FAT32
drives/partitions larger than 128 gb.

However you should not convert this drive to NTFS because doing so may
result in a cluster size of 512 bytes which is not optimal and may
have a detrimental impact on performance. Rather you should back up
any data content that is currently on this drive then use start - run
- diskmgmt.msc and delete the existing FAT32 partition complete.
Reboot the computer then repartition the drive using diskmgmt.msc and
it will automatically use NTFS with 4K clusters.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada