Upgrading to new hard drive question....

[Bobbie Leslie]

At present I have WindowsXP Pro dual booted with WindowsME, both using
FAT32. I bought a WD 160gig hard drive (I do a lot of work with
pictures) and I want to format it with the NTFS file system. Is it
possible to use Norton Ghost or any of the other cloning programs and
clone my programs and files from the FAT32 system to the new NTFS
system or is that a total no? I hate to have to dig up all the CD's
and DVD's to re-install all this stuff (about 13gigs)? Another thought
that crossed my mind was to convert the FAT32 drive to NTFS but that
wouldn't allow me to use the smallest NTFS files. I need some help
before I start down this path.
Thanks,
Bob

 

[Malke]

At present I have WindowsXP Pro dual booted with WindowsME, both using
FAT32. I bought a WD 160gig hard drive (I do a lot of work with
pictures) and I want to format it with the NTFS file system. Is it
possible to use Norton Ghost or any of the other cloning programs and
clone my programs and files from the FAT32 system to the new NTFS
system or is that a total no? I hate to have to dig up all the CD's
and DVD's to re-install all this stuff (about 13gigs)? Another thought
that crossed my mind was to convert the FAT32 drive to NTFS but that
wouldn't allow me to use the smallest NTFS files. I need some help
before I start down this path.
Thanks,
Bob

The new hard drive should have come with a utility that will copy the
old drive to the new drive. If you bought white box, go to the drive
mftr.'s website and download the utility. It is free. Usually you'll
make a bootable floppy and boot with it. Put the new drive in slave
position and then follow the copy program prompts. When you're done,
you'll put the new drive (with its newly copied data) in master
position. You might have to reactivate Windows, but this is no big
deal.

Malke

 

[Harry Ohrn]

If you use a disk copy program to clone your old drive to the new drive it
will retain the same file format as the original. That is what cloning
software does. However you can properly prepare your new drive to be
converted to NTFS after you clone the old drive over. Alex Nichol has an
excellent paper on doing this. In order to follow his advice you will need
BootIt NG http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html which is a low cost
bootmanger, imaging and partitioning tool. It will enable you to do the disk
to disk copy, prepare the new drive for the conversion from FAT32 to NTFS
and you can simply follow Alex's advice on how to accomplish that feat here
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm

 

[Kamal]

Windows ME cannot read NTFS partitions so beware.

If you use a disk copy program to clone your old drive to the new drive it
will retain the same file format as the original. That is what cloning
software does. However you can properly prepare your new drive to be
converted to NTFS after you clone the old drive over. Alex Nichol has an
excellent paper on doing this. In order to follow his advice you will need
BootIt NG http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html which is a low cost
bootmanger, imaging and partitioning tool. It will enable you to do the disk
to disk copy, prepare the new drive for the conversion from FAT32 to NTFS
and you can simply follow Alex's advice on how to accomplish that feat here
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm

--

Harry Ohrn MS-MVP [Shell/User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp

At present I have WindowsXP Pro dual booted with WindowsME, both using
FAT32. I bought a WD 160gig hard drive (I do a lot of work with
pictures) and I want to format it with the NTFS file system. Is it
possible to use Norton Ghost or any of the other cloning programs and
clone my programs and files from the FAT32 system to the new NTFS
system or is that a total no? I hate to have to dig up all the CD's
and DVD's to re-install all this stuff (about 13gigs)? Another thought
that crossed my mind was to convert the FAT32 drive to NTFS but that
wouldn't allow me to use the smallest NTFS files. I need some help
before I start down this path.
Thanks,
Bob

 

[Harry Ohrn]

And your point is what?

--

Harry Ohrn MS-MVP [Shell/User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp

Windows ME cannot read NTFS partitions so beware.

If you use a disk copy program to clone your old drive to the new drive
it
will retain the same file format as the original. That is what cloning
software does. However you can properly prepare your new drive to be
converted to NTFS after you clone the old drive over. Alex Nichol has an
excellent paper on doing this. In order to follow his advice you will
need
BootIt NG http://www.bootitng.com/bootitng.html which is a low cost
bootmanger, imaging and partitioning tool. It will enable you to do the disk
to disk copy, prepare the new drive for the conversion from FAT32 to NTFS
and you can simply follow Alex's advice on how to accomplish that feat here
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm

--

Harry Ohrn MS-MVP [Shell/User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp

At present I have WindowsXP Pro dual booted with WindowsME, both using
FAT32. I bought a WD 160gig hard drive (I do a lot of work with
pictures) and I want to format it with the NTFS file system. Is it
possible to use Norton Ghost or any of the other cloning programs and
clone my programs and files from the FAT32 system to the new NTFS
system or is that a total no? I hate to have to dig up all the CD's
and DVD's to re-install all this stuff (about 13gigs)? Another thought
that crossed my mind was to convert the FAT32 drive to NTFS but that
wouldn't allow me to use the smallest NTFS files. I need some help
before I start down this path.
Thanks,
Bob

 

[Bobbie Leslie]

I printed out the paper written by Alex Nichol, MS-MVP titled
"CONVERTING FAT 32 toNTFS". I have a great deal of respect for
anything Alex puts his name on but I'm a "tad" confused. In his paper,
paragraph three reads; "What happens is that FAT32 partitions
formatted by most Windows versions except Windows XP itself etc,
etc.....". Since I am already using Windows XP Pro with FAT32 do I
need to go thru the Bootit NG part or can I go straight to the Windows
XP convert tool? I know it is not proper to ask for an incividual for
an anxwer in the NG's, but I hoped to find someone who might be able
to provide an answer.
Thanks,
Bob

 

[Harry Ohrn]

Was you install of Windows XP and upgrade over Windows 98 or Me? Or was you
install a clean install of XP Pro but you formatted as FAT32? If this was an
upgrade you should run BootIt NG prior to the conversion. If you did a clean
install formatting as FAT32 then you should be OK with the simple convert
without having to use BootIT. I hope that helps.

 

[Bobbie Leslie]

Clean install on separate hard drive using FAT32.
Thanks,
Bob

 

[Bobbie Leslie]

Since I already had a copy of Bootit NG that I bought some time ago
and use on another machine I went ahead and ran it IAW Alex Nichol's
article. It only took about two seconds so I guess everything is okay.
Thanks to all for your inputs.
Bob