Hard drive partition and FAT32 to NTFS conversion

[Fed Bernal]

I have a hard drive in my laptop that is partitioned at
the middle into drives C and D (that's how it came from
factory installation). C: is FAT32, and D: is NTFS.
Pretty much everything is run from drive C (windows XP),
and the D: is empty. I am running out of space on C:,
and I have been reading a bit about converting FAT32 to
NTFS. Is it advisable to:

1. Convert C: from FAT32 to NTFS,
2. Remove the partition so I can use the entire drive

I know very little about computers, and I want to be
careful about messing with the hard drive. Any insight
will come in handy.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I have a hard drive in my laptop that is partitioned at
the middle into drives C and D (that's how it came from
factory installation). C: is FAT32, and D: is NTFS.
Pretty much everything is run from drive C (windows XP),
and the D: is empty. I am running out of space on C:,
and I have been reading a bit about converting FAT32 to
NTFS. Is it advisable to:

1. Convert C: from FAT32 to NTFS,
2. Remove the partition so I can use the entire drive

How about running more stuff from D:? Anything you can uninstall and
reinstall safely, do so, installing to D:. Don't install new stuff to C:.

 

[Bob Willard]

I have a hard drive in my laptop that is partitioned at
the middle into drives C and D (that's how it came from
factory installation). C: is FAT32, and D: is NTFS.
Pretty much everything is run from drive C (windows XP),
and the D: is empty. I am running out of space on C:,
and I have been reading a bit about converting FAT32 to
NTFS. Is it advisable to:

1. Convert C: from FAT32 to NTFS,
2. Remove the partition so I can use the entire drive

I know very little about computers, and I want to be
careful about messing with the hard drive. Any insight
will come in handy.

Before trying anything with your HD parts, backup your files.
Juggling partitions is rather like juggling lightbulbs -- a
simple mistake, or a power line glitch, can be shattering.

If you have a XP CD, either OEM or Retail (but not a simple
vendor-supplied recovery CD), then you can do what you want.
With NT/W2K/XP as the only OS, I prefer a single NTFS part
for any HD, at least up to 120 GB.