Help - How to convert an NTFS drive to FAT16 drive

[Orville Noah]

Is there any easy to convert an NTFS drive to FAT16 or
FAT32 drive?
Size of the drive is less than 60Gig. I have removed the
drive from a PC that did use this drive as a D: drive where
WinXP Pro is active on C: drive, and this second drive
was a backup drive. I need to transfer this NTFS drive to
another PC that has Win98SE loaded on C: drive. I am
sure I won't be able to read/write to this NTFS drive
under Win98SE. Any help will be highly appreciated.

 

[Martmcd]

Depending on which machine you have it installed in :-
if in the winxp machine - Start > run, type diskmgmt.msc right click on the
drive and select format then select FATnn from the options.

if in the win98se machine run fdisk from the command prompt, recreate the
partition then format the drive.

NOTE: you will loose all the data on the drive!

Good Luck,
Martin

 

[Ted Zieglar]

"Is there any easy to convert an NTFS drive to FAT16 or FAT32 drive?"

Nope. You'll need to purchase special software, likePartition Magic, or do a clean install.

NTFS offers several important advantages over FAT32 for Windows XP. Windows XP won't run on FAT16.

Ted Zieglar

 

[Orville Noah]

Thank you for the info. Let me try and see if it works. Thanks again.

 

[Orville Noah]

Since I was given another suggestion, I am about to try that.
Thanks for the info.

"Is there any easy to convert an NTFS drive to FAT16 or FAT32 drive?"
Nope. You'll need to purchase special software, likePartition Magic, or do
a clean install.
NTFS offers several important advantages over FAT32 for Windows XP. Windows
XP won't run on FAT16.

 

[Guest]

Be aware that converting NTFS to FAT will destroy all data on the disk. File
format conversion w/o data loss is only available going from FAT to NTFS.
The easiest way to covert this drive to a FAT format is: Put it back in the
XP Pro box, go to CONROL PANEL, ADMINISTRATIVE TOOlS, COMPUTER MANAGEMENT,
DISK MANAGEMENT, and right click on the drive from there. You will have the
option to format. Just follow the prompts. Warning: You will loose all data
on the disk when it is converted from NTFS to a FAT16 or 32 format.

Peace always
jeditech

 

[Orville Noah]

Thank you for the info. I have just learned something new. Since the
second
drive is a backup drive, all useful data has been saved in CDs. Thanks
again.

 

[Anna]

Is there any easy to convert an NTFS drive to FAT16 or
FAT32 drive?
Size of the drive is less than 60Gig. I have removed the
drive from a PC that did use this drive as a D: drive where
WinXP Pro is active on C: drive, and this second drive
was a backup drive. I need to transfer this NTFS drive to
another PC that has Win98SE loaded on C: drive. I am
sure I won't be able to read/write to this NTFS drive
under Win98SE. Any help will be highly appreciated.

First of all, when you say the size of the drive is less than 60 GB, I
assume you're referring to the data on that drive, i.e., you're working with
a 60 GB drive or thereabouts.

I also assume that you want to create a single FAT32 partition on that
drive, right? That is, you're not interested in creating multiple partitions
on that drive, yes?

As Ted Zieglar has informed you in response to your query, if you wish to
retain the data on that drive so that it can be accessed by your Win98
system and merely want to convert the NTFS file system to FAT32, then the
only way to accomplish this would be through the use of a third-party
program such as the one mentioned by Ted.

However, in a later posting, you've indicated that you have already saved
the data to CDs, so that presumably you're willing to format that drive
FAT32 (understanding that all data presently on that drive will be lost) and
install the drive in your Win98 system.

A number of responses indicated you should use XP's Disk Management utility
to format that soon-to-be-transferred drive. The problem here is that XP
will not allow you to format that drive FAT32 since its capacity is > 32 GB
(XP's limit to format a drive in FAT32). You can get around this by creating
multiple partitions of not > than 32 GB. However, if you want a single
partition for your (about) 60 GB drive to be formatted FAT32, then the DM
utility will not suffice.

You can, however, use a DOS boot floppy disk, e.g., a Win98 Startup floppy
disk, to format the entire disk capacity of your HD with the FAT32 file
system.
Anna

 

[Orville Noah]

Thank you Anna. Incidentally, when all else fails, I end up
with the old DOS boot disk and do things that I still remember.
Thank you for the info.