Converting Fat 32 into NTFS after install?

MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
edited October 2004 in Hardware
I have XP Home w/SP2 installed and running quite nicely on a 4 gig C: drive formatted with Fat 32. I know you can change to NTSF from Fat 32 and that it's one way only. How much, if any, room will I gain from such a switch? Also, will I lose the ability to utilize floppy's (since I have an upgrade version of XP home I need to use my 98 floppy to boot and reformat before installing 98 and then upgrading to XP)? If it goes belly up will I lose the ability to reformat in the aforementioned manner?
What are the advantages of switching to NTSF on my OS drive? All the other partitions are formatted with NTSF btw. :scratch:

Comments

  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited October 2004
    Lol, first off, not to sound like an ass, but I gotta say it's NTFS ;);D Second, I think Tex can explain this better, but XP arranges/optimizes itself and certain programs, etc, according to how much you use them. It puts itself and whatever the most-commonly-used programs are towards the outside of the disk (faster read/writes). I'm think it only works if you have NTFS, but it might also work with FAT32. NTFS is also more stable, I believe, than FAT32.

    As for gaining space, I don't really think you will. Maybe a fractional amount, due to different default cluster size (I think?), but for the most part it will be the same amount of space.

    Not sure about the floppy question, as I don't even have one... :-/

    EDIT: To be honest, I'm not really sure about any of this. It's just kinda floating in from my not-so-great memory ;)


    Link: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm
    Down at the bottom it *does* say FAT32 is better for small drives (which is, in your case) so I dunno...Where's that damn Texan when ya need him? :p
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    MGK. Good to see you!

    NTFS is MUCH more stable than FAT32. It shouldn't make much of any difference between the two files systems how much space a given quantity of data would occupy on the hard drive.

    If I remember correctly, if you convert from FAT to NTFS, or vice versa, it's nearly the same as a format, in that you will lose all your data. As for boot disk - I don't recall if your Win98 floppy will still work or not. It's been a long time since I've used a boot floppy.

    Maybe I'm missing something here; but you can boot and format/reformat with your XP CD.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Partition magic 8 can convert FAT to NTFS safely. I also seem to recall windows being able to do the same thing sans data loss.

    But it's been a while since I've even SEEN a FAT32 computer.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Whoa, this is way easier than you think:

    At a command prompt, type:

    CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS

    and that's it. Simple, easy, quick, and painless.

    No data will be damaged in the conversion.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    No data will be damaged in the conversion.
    Learn sumpin everyday. :D
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2004
    Prime... You can do it that way but then your still gonna need PM8 to modify the cluster size. When you convert from fat32 it makes your ntfs block size fixed at 512 thats bytes not K. You want much bigger then 512 bytes or your just hammering the h*ll out of the disk trasferring 512 bytes at a time. Many don't understand what a horrible move this rteally is. Unless you own PM8 or paragon partiton manager as they can bothg alter the cluster size after the fact anyway

    Tex
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