NTFS VS FAT file system

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Guest

I am thinking of upgrading a Win98SE computer to Win2000. During setup, there is a choice to select NTFS or FAT as the file system.

The following appears in the Microsoft notes for upgrading from Win98 to Win 2000

"The conversion to NTFS is one-way. You will not be able to convert your drive back to FAT if you choose to upgrade your drive. If you decide to switch to NTFS, you can do so during Setup or after Windows 2000 is installed.

When it says you cannot convert the drive back to FAT, does that mean never, ever, or not from within the installation once installed - ie you would have to fdisk and reformat before putting FAT back on
 
Not from within the installation. Yes, you would either have to reformat the
partition ()technically, you should not have to fdisk), which would mean
losing the partition per se (of course, you can back up and restore, if you
know what to restore and what not to). And there are third party utilities
which can convert drive partitions between file systems. But nothing
prevents the physical drive from being reformatted. Windows 2000 et al allow
you to convert from FAT16 to FAT32 to NTFS, but do not convert back.
 
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