FAT32 to NTFS

[Paul]

Hi, I want to change my primary hard drive from FAT32 to
NTFS within XP Prof. Which would be the best way to do
this ??

Could I backup on my current FAT32 partition reformat to
NTFS with a fresh copy of XP on and then restore the
earlier backup ??

Many Thanks

Paul

 

[molsonexpert]

Hi, I want to change my primary hard drive from FAT32 to
NTFS within XP Prof. Which would be the best way to do
this ??

Could I backup on my current FAT32 partition reformat to
NTFS with a fresh copy of XP on and then restore the
earlier backup ??

Many Thanks

Paul

Use the convert command.

steve.

 

[Vagabond Software]

Hi, I want to change my primary hard drive from FAT32 to
NTFS within XP Prof. Which would be the best way to do
this ??

Could I backup on my current FAT32 partition reformat to
NTFS with a fresh copy of XP on and then restore the
earlier backup ??

The following link provides a good solution:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

- carl

 

[Andrew C.]

START -> RUN -> cmd

Type the following:

convert c: /fs:ntfs

(If you want to convert any other drive, change the c: to
the drive of choice.)

Backing up the data is of course always recommended, but
this should work without you losing any data. Just don't
interrupt the process!

If you have Partion Magic, you can use that too.

 

[Al Dykes]

START -> RUN -> cmd

Type the following:

convert c: /fs:ntfs

(If you want to convert any other drive, change the c: to
the drive of choice.)

Backing up the data is of course always recommended, but
this should work without you losing any data. Just don't
interrupt the process!

Backup is always called for, of course. but have any of us old-timers
ever seen a conversion of FAT32 to NTFS Fail ? I haven't.

During system installation it's not likely to fail, and if it did
nothing would be lost. I'm talking about people with well-used
machines and lots of data. I've done it mostly when people have asked
for a bigger disk on a machine that was installed with FAT32. Maybe
100 machines over 10 years.

 

[SlowJet]

If reinstalling programs is to much,
then use command to convert FAT32 to NTFS,
Allow about 12% free space on PP.
It is 98.6% fail safe as the commit point is at the very
end. (Assuming disk hardware is good.)

Back up imediately after.
Defrag and re-boot 3 times.
Backup again.


If reinstalling program is not difficult for you, then
save important data, setings, account numbers,
license's , install packages, drivers packages, etc on
the a backup or another disk. If you don't have a second
disk go get one and use it for the master because if you
are running FAT32 you disk is rather old.

Install Xp freah on a newly created partition (del old,
create new.)
When installl is all checked out,
make a backup, restore point,
do the rework (Recover packages, driver, user info, etc,
Install drivers.
Install programs,
configure with persoanl data and settings,
recover old data.)

check out system,
backup,
defrag,
re-boot 3 times.
back up

and back up again.

GL,

SJ

 

[Ron Martell]

Backup is always called for, of course. but have any of us old-timers
ever seen a conversion of FAT32 to NTFS Fail ? I haven't.

During system installation it's not likely to fail, and if it did
nothing would be lost. I'm talking about people with well-used
machines and lots of data. I've done it mostly when people have asked
for a bigger disk on a machine that was installed with FAT32. Maybe
100 machines over 10 years.

FAT32 to NTFS conversions, without first having used a partitioning
utility to properly align the partition, will result in a 512K cluster
size with NTFS which is far from optimum.

See MVP Alex Nichol's article on NTFS conversion at
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm for a detailed explanation and
also instructions on how to align the partition before conversion so
as to attain the proper 4K NTFS cluster size.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

You can safely convert the partition 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
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. - RAH

 

[Paul]

Thanks everyone for your replies.
Cheers
Paul

 

[Alex Nichol]

Hi, I want to change my primary hard drive from FAT32 to
NTFS within XP Prof. Which would be the best way to do
this ??

Could I backup on my current FAT32 partition reformat to
NTFS with a fresh copy of XP on and then restore the
earlier backup ??

While you should backup, just in case, you can do an in place
conversion.. See advice at my page www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm

 

[Juan I. Cahis]

Dear friends:

Generally speaking, Microsoft's "Convert" utility doesn't cause any
problem, but there are some issues.

1) Always do a backup first.

2) If you have Multiboot Capabilities in your boot.ini, including
Microsoft's own Recovery Console, they will not work after conversion.
The reason for that is that "Convert" forgets to convert the boot
sector image that those multi-boot applications need to boot. So you
will need to reinstall all of them again.

3) They are some applications, like ZoneAlarm Pro that they will
forget all its settings, and others their registrations, so be
prepared to reconfigure them after the conversion, or to re-register
them. The reason of this problem is explained in Partition Magic 8.01
Help File: "during the conversion, file names are required to be
converted from one method representing characters to another method".
So, if your program stored its keys or its settings in a file whose
name has some special characters in it, maybe its name would have
changed after the conversion.

4) The same issue above applies for any user file with special or
"foreign" characters in its name.

START -> RUN -> cmd

Type the following:

convert c: /fs:ntfs

(If you want to convert any other drive, change the c: to
the drive of choice.)

Backing up the data is of course always recommended, but
this should work without you losing any data. Just don't
interrupt the process!

If you have Partion Magic, you can use that too.

Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)
Note: Please forgive me for my bad English, I am trying to improve it!