Changing FAT32 drive to NTFS

[Don F]

anyone have a solution to changing my C drive from FAT32
to NTFS format. I have basically run out of room, and
believe that by changing from FAT32 to NTFS I will free up
some space...

 

[Billybob]

If you are running out of disk space you need to consider a larger hard
drive.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

anyone have a solution to changing my C drive from FAT32
to NTFS format. I have basically run out of room, and
believe that by changing from FAT32 to NTFS I will free up
some space...

Doubtful on the freeing up space. As a matter of fact, in order to change
you need a certain amount free..

Anyway - go to a command prompt and type:

convert /?

Good Luck!
Make Backups!

 

[Gator]

your kidding aren't you.....what possessed you to think of this...sure glad
you don't work with of for me...
get a bigger or 2nd hd....

 

[Haus]

Hello
To change from Fat32 to NTFS
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm
or
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307881

 

[Alex Nichol]

anyone have a solution to changing my C drive from FAT32
to NTFS format. I have basically run out of room, and
believe that by changing from FAT32 to NTFS I will free up
some space...

For conversion see www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm

If this is a big partition you will save something from reducing the
'cluster size' chunk used to allocate space. Roughly the number of
files times 2 K (if the partition is in 8 to 16 GB) times 6K if it is in
16 to 32 and times 14K above that, probably more if there are a lot of
small files, Unless it is such a really big partition though, you will
probably not gain overall, as the file system structures of NTFS will be
bigger than those of FAT. Also you need a fair amount of free space for
the conversion.. I don't think it is the action to take straight off as
a means of gaining space

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 07:07:57 -0800, "Don F"

anyone have a solution to changing my C drive from FAT32
to NTFS format. I have basically run out of room, and
believe that by changing from FAT32 to NTFS I will free up
some space...

Nah, that's a really bad time to try a file system conversion (when
space is low) even if the conversion is to a more space-efficient file
system. You could end up with porridge.

Rather free space by curbing some of XP's excesses...

1) Shrink the SR storage allocation

That will prolly get you a Gig or few straight off the bat!

2) Shrink the absurdly bloated web caches

The web cache is there to speed up web pages by keeping copies of the
last few pages you've been to. This helps with modem usage
especially; at 50k (5k bytes per second, best-case) it can take a
while loading the same pages and graphics again and again.

But MS allocates anywhere from 256M to over a Gig of disk space for
this! Any idea how long it would take to load a Gig of stuff via
modem? It will prolly take months before the cache starts to discard
old stuff. And what's worse, this bloated web cache is duplicated for
each user account - another easy way to lose Gigs of space.

3) Clear unused but pending CDR writes

XP's built-in CD writing tends to leave things lying around on the
hard drive that you thought were already on CDR. Once again, each
user account has its own CD writing buffer, so etc.

HTH

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