fat32 to ntfs question, need input.

[Kiley]

Here's what I have. xp pro
harddrive 1 partitioned to drive c & e 20 mb (10
each)
harddrive 2 d: 30 mb
harddrive 3 partitioned to g,h and i 120 mb
I'd like to go to ntfs and have read a lot of info
on this conversion process. I downloaded the tool
bootitng to move or slide a partition to get the
4k cluster instead of the 512. And I have to do
this on each drive or partition before converting.
My understanding from what I've been reading is
that this is necessary, however I seem to recall
someone posting that bootitng really screwed up
his machine. Does anyone else have any experience
with bootitng? And the next question is, imho, I
start with c: then do the other drives and
partitions on down the line one at a time?
Thanks much for any help.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Kiley.

I've never tried BootItNG, although I've heard many good things about it.
But you should not need it for this project. The WinXP version of
convert.exe is better than previous versions and almost always results in
the default 4 KB clusters.

Unless you plan to install Win9x/ME on this computer, or access it from
MS-DOS, then there's no reason to cling to the FAT32 format. NTFS provides
many benefits, including security, both in the sense of secure from prying
eyes and in the sense of secure from disk failure.

I don't think it matters much which volume you convert first. No matter
whether first or last, you can't convert your system partition (almost
always C or your boot volume (where \Windows resides) "on the fly".
You'll have to accept convert.exe's invitation to let it convert those
volumes on your next reboot. The actual conversion process is very fast and
rarely if ever results in data loss, but a backup is never a bad idea.

Let us know what you decide to do and how it works out for you.

RC

 

[Lemon Jelly]

R. C. White - typed:

I've never tried BootItNG, although I've heard many good things about
it. But you should not need it for this project. The WinXP version of
convert.exe is better than previous versions and almost always
results in the default 4 KB clusters.

??!

I've just checked my version of convert.exe & is the original version
which created 512Byte clusters on one partition! As it wasn't the boot
one, I reformatted from within XP then copied back the data.
I'd advise using bootit with care, rather than blindly using convert.exe
as I did! I think its to do with the size of the partition (>~8GB?).
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm
gives instructions on using BootitNG.

 

[GSV Three Minds in a Can]

Here's what I have. xp pro
harddrive 1 partitioned to drive c & e 20 mb (10
each)
harddrive 2 d: 30 mb
harddrive 3 partitioned to g,h and i 120 mb
I'd like to go to ntfs and have read a lot of info
on this conversion process. I downloaded the tool
bootitng to move or slide a partition to get the
4k cluster instead of the 512. And I have to do
this on each drive or partition before converting.
My understanding from what I've been reading is
that this is necessary, however I seem to recall
someone posting that bootitng really screwed up
his machine. Does anyone else have any experience
with bootitng? And the next question is, imho, I
start with c: then do the other drives and
partitions on down the line one at a time?

BootitNG has worked fine for me, but it's always wise to backup, since a
sudden power loss will really ruin your whole day. If the FAT32
partitions were created/formatted with WinXP, they should be '4k
aligned' already. If they were created with Win2k, or Win9x/ME, they
probably won't be (they'll be 512-byte aligned, but anything more than
that is a bonus). You really do need to get them 4k-aligned .. 512 bytes
NTFS clusters are absolutely no fun (as I can testify).

 

[Kiley]

Here's what I have. xp pro
harddrive 1 partitioned to drive c & e 20 mb (10
each)
harddrive 2 d: 30 mb
harddrive 3 partitioned to g,h and i 120 mb
I'd like to go to ntfs and have read a lot of info
on this conversion process. I downloaded the tool
bootitng to move or slide a partition to get the
4k cluster instead of the 512. And I have to do
this on each drive or partition before converting.
My understanding from what I've been reading is
that this is necessary, however I seem to recall
someone posting that bootitng really screwed up
his machine. Does anyone else have any experience
with bootitng? And the next question is, imho, I
start with c: then do the other drives and
partitions on down the line one at a time?
Thanks much for any help.

All went well, thanks for the input.
I used bootitng to align c:, but it was already
aligned, then I converted. As a safety precaution
I diabled all startup progs ie: zonealarm, norton
antivirus, kodak.
I did the same for e: next, then d: which had to
align-took about 45 minutes. g: had to align and
then h: which had to align. I have left I: fat32
for the time being, have not thought thru if there
is any advantage of having a 32 drive or not.
The only problem I have had was testing MOHAA
Breakthough the game suddenly shelled out to the
desktop!! Never did that before. Thanks again.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I've never tried BootItNG, although I've heard many good things about it.
But you should not need it for this project. The WinXP version of
convert.exe is better than previous versions and almost always results in
the default 4 KB clusters.

It doesn't if the partition was aligned on odd 2K boundaries, which is
almost always the case for disks formatted in Win9x - and these are the
ones usually being converted. A FAT32 disk formatted *by* XP (or I
think by Win2000) will be correctly aligned in the first place.

It pays off to take a little trouble to check the alignment - if it
proves to be correct, well and good, but that is not likely

 

[Alex Nichol]

BootitNG has worked fine for me, but it's always wise to backup, since a
sudden power loss will really ruin your whole day. If the FAT32
partitions were created/formatted with WinXP, they should be '4k
aligned' already. If they were created with Win2k, or Win9x/ME, they
probably won't be

Win2K I have not been able to check - can you confirm that you have met
a disk formatted with it that was off alignment? I had thought that the
formatting to FAT 32 had been changed for it.

You should make a back up anyway - a power loss during conversion would
be bad news too!