XP Pro SP3

[mag]

I'm planning to install SP3 over the weekend but before that I want to image
my C drive on to an external hard drive. The imaging software (XXClone)
tells me the C drive is NTFS and the external drive is FAT32 so will this
work? If not, can I change the external drive to NFTS? It's a portable
verbatim if that matters.

Thanks,

Maggie
(who is very anxious about doing this)

 

[Randem]

If you are cloning your drive the partition on the destination drive will be
destroyed anyway so that is not a factor. If you are creating an image the
Fat32 FS will hold it.

--
Randem Systems
Your Installation Specialist
The Top Inno Setup Script Generator
http://www.randem.com/innoscript.html
Disk Read Error Press Ctl+Alt+Del to Restart
http://www.randem.com/discus/messages/9402/9406.html?1236319938

 

[Anna]

If you are cloning your drive the partition on the destination drive will
be destroyed anyway so that is not a factor. If you are creating an image
the Fat32 FS will hold it.

--
Randem Systems
Your Installation Specialist
The Top Inno Setup Script Generator
http://www.randem.com/innoscript.html
Disk Read Error Press Ctl+Alt+Del to Restart
http://www.randem.com/discus/messages/9402/9406.html?1236319938

Maggie:
I'm not familiar with the XXClone program, however, assuming that it works
like every other disk-cloning program...

Since your "source" hard drive (HDD) - the disk you are cloning - contains
an operating system (OS) that is NTFS-formatted, that file system will be
copied over to your external HDD along with the contents of your source HDD.
It doesn't matter whether your external HDD is FAT32-formatted.

As Randem has pointed out, and as I'm reasonably certain you know, *all* the
data on your external HDD will disappear as a result of the disk-cloning
operation, so it's not a matter of the FAT32 file system "hold(ing) it",
i.e., the cloned contents. That FAT32 file system on your external HDD will
disappear along with its contents. I just wanted to make sure you're clear
about this. Just remember that a clone is a clone is a clone.

You're very wise to clone the contents of your source HDD *before*
installing SP3 on your system. We always recommend a user clone his/her
day-to-day working HDD to another HDD *before* undertaking a major change to
their system, such as installing a Service Pack.
Anna

 

[mag]

Thanks for the advice.

The external hard drive is a new one so there's nothing on it yet.

Maggie

 

[Daave]

I'm planning to install SP3 over the weekend but before that I want
to image my C drive on to an external hard drive. The imaging
software (XXClone) tells me the C drive is NTFS and the external
drive is FAT32 so will this work? If not, can I change the external
drive to NFTS? It's a portable verbatim if that matters.

If you plan on physically swapping drives if the need arises, cloning is
an excellent idea. And as Randem and Anna pointed out, the clone will
have whatever file system is on the source drive.

However, if you want to be able to use this external hard drive for
other things, too, you might want to look into creating an image archive
of the source drive instead. And if you decide to do this, you can
always change to NTFS on your external hard drive (before you create the
image!).