NTSF or Fat32 for External HD

[Guest]

I've got an external USB Hard Drive that I'm going to use to backup (image)
my "C" drive. Should the external hard drive be formatted as NTSF or Fat32
or does it matter. I'm running Windows XP Home SP2.. Thanks, Mack

 

[Al Dykes]

I've got an external USB Hard Drive that I'm going to use to backup (image)
my "C" drive. Should the external hard drive be formatted as NTSF or Fat32
or does it matter. I'm running Windows XP Home SP2.. Thanks, Mack

Since your image of C is probably going to be larger than 4GB (FAT32
file size limit) you'll have to use NTFS unless your image tool alows
you to slice the image into 4GB chuncks.

Do everything you can to test your images. The backup software I use
(Acronis) can be told to do a readback.

Until you've actually re-imaged to bare iron you really don't know
if your backup/restore software and hardware actually work,
for you.

Cheap USB external drives scare me. I'd do a readback on every backup.

Read http://www.taobackup.com/

 

[Harry Avant]

I have an external USB and formatted in Fat32 since I need to read
it's contents with both a Win 98 system and an XP system. If you're
only using XP format to NTSF, it's more stable and allows for larger
files than Fat32.

 

[Guest]

Thanks to both of you.. the info about the two systems (98 and XP) was very
useful since I too will be using the Ext. HD on both. Thanks again. Mack