How safe is the "convert" command?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Robert S
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Robert S

I'd like to convert a 300G Maxtor OneTouch drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Because of the amount of data that I've got it would be very
inconvenient to have to back this drive up. Is it reasonably safe to
use the "convert" command on this disk? I've done a practice run on
another drive on my PC without any problems.

BTW I don't have any life-or-death commercial data on this drive.
 
Robert S said:
I'd like to convert a 300G Maxtor OneTouch drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Because of the amount of data that I've got it would be very inconvenient
to have to back this drive up. Is it reasonably safe to use the "convert"
command on this disk? I've done a practice run on another drive on my PC
without any problems.

BTW I don't have any life-or-death commercial data on this drive.
Click to expand...

I have never heard of any problems with the convert command.
On the other hand I think that you're playing a dangerous game.
Even though you don't store any critical data on this drive, if the
files are important then you should back them up. Disk drives
are cheap. There are several ways in which you could lose your
data, e.g. user error, file system corruption, disk failure, theft,
fire, electrical damage.
 
In
Robert S said:
I'd like to convert a 300G Maxtor OneTouch drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Because of the amount of data that I've got it would be very
inconvenient to have to back this drive up. Is it reasonably safe to
use the "convert" command on this disk? I've done a practice run on
another drive on my PC without any problems.

BTW I don't have any life-or-death commercial data on this drive.
Click to expand...

I've never had a problem using this command ... .no doubt someone has :)

I've converted hundreds, if not thousands of drives and all completed
successfully, so in my experience I'd say it is reliable.

Obviously power cuts are not a good thing :)
 
It was rather ugly actually. "convert" would not convert large backup files
and ISO images. I had to either delete these or temporarily place them onto
another drive and copy them back when the format was changed. chkdsk
revealed a few problems as well. Hopefully these problems won't occur now
that the drive is NTFS.

I don't think I've lost anything crucial however.
 
Robert said:
I'd like to convert a 300G Maxtor OneTouch drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Because of the amount of data that I've got it would be very
inconvenient to have to back this drive up.
Click to expand...

Would it would be even more inconvenient to lose all the files? If you
don't mind losing all the files if something goes bad then don't bother
with a backup...

Is it reasonably safe to
use the "convert" command on this disk? I've done a practice run on
another drive on my PC without any problems.
Click to expand...

99.999% of the time everything goes well and the conversion is flawless.
In the .001% of times when things go wrong the results lead to
catastrophic data loss. Do you have a UPS on the system? A simple
power failure or power flicker during this operation will lead to the
loss of all your files.

BTW I don't have any life-or-death commercial data on this drive.
Click to expand...

I should hope not!

John
 
Robert S said:
I'd like to convert a 300G Maxtor OneTouch drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Because of the amount of data that I've got it would be very inconvenient
to have to back this drive up. Is it reasonably safe to use the "convert"
command on this disk? I've done a practice run on another drive on my PC
without any problems.

BTW I don't have any life-or-death commercial data on this drive.
Click to expand...

Whether or not you are converting your drive, backing it up is a prudent
idea. Is the inconvenience of replacing the data less than the inconvenience
of backing it up? Only you can decide.
 
I'd like to convert a 300G Maxtor OneTouch drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Because of the amount of data that I've got it would be very
inconvenient to have to back this drive up. Is it reasonably safe to
use the "convert" command on this disk? I've done a practice run on
another drive on my PC without any problems.

BTW I don't have any life-or-death commercial data on this drive.
Click to expand...



Reasonably safe? Yes. Completely safe? No.

Conversion is a big step, affecting everything on your drive. When you
take such a big step, no matter how unlikely, it is always possible
that something (a power failure while it's in progress, for example)
could go wrong. For that reason, it's prudent to make sure you have a
backup of anything you can't afford to lose before beginning.

By the way, before you convert, read
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm because there's an issue regarding
cluster size that isn't obvious.
 
Robert said:
I'd like to convert a 300G Maxtor OneTouch drive from FAT32 to NTFS.
Because of the amount of data that I've got it would be very
inconvenient to have to back this drive up. Is it reasonably safe to
use the "convert" command on this disk? I've done a practice run on
another drive on my PC without any problems.

BTW I don't have any life-or-death commercial data on this drive.
Click to expand...


You can safely convert your current hard drive 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

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