converting from ntfs to fat 32

[lreid]

I am thinking about converting from fat32 to ntfs on both of my ibm 30gb hard drives. If I do not like it, what is the easiest way to convert back to fat32 (reformating and reinstalling doesnt bother me)

thanks, lreid

[vass0922]

"reformating and reinstalling doesnt bother me"

Good cause its the most reliable way

There's no MS way to do it.

From what I understand Partition Magic can do it, but not sure how reliable the filesystem is afterwards.

Safest bet would be to indeed reformat the drive as FAT32

Realistically though there's no reason to convert back to FAT32 unless you have a win9x/*nix OS also installed on the same machine.

[lreid]

so how do you do it? my friend wanted to change ntfs back to fat32 but fdisk would not see it. there is now way inside of xp to format back to fat32. could it be done wheni reinstall xp?

thanks, lreid

[Mickwish]

Yeah, easiest would be a reformat. Partition magic (version 7 or higher) can do it, but why would you want to?

NTFS is much better than FAT32 for security and disk space management.

Cheers
Mick

[JohnE.]

Afaik, once you convert FAT32 to NTFS, the one-and-only way to go back is to reformat.

The best way to convert FAT32 to NTFS is to format the drive as NTFS before/during installation of the OS. You lose some disk performance if you merely convert using the command prompt or Logical Disk Manager.

[Mickwish]

FDISk can't see NTFS partitions as NTFS partitions, but later versions (win98SE and above) can see them as "non-DOS" partitions. Just delete the non-DOS partitions and you can make a FTA32 partition.

Cheers
Mick

[lreid]

ok, after i convert to ntfs....if i do not like it or i have problems, how do i convert back to fat32?

thanks, lreid

[Mickwish]

Originally posted by JohnE.
The best way to convert FAT32 to NTFS is to format the drive as NTFS before installing the OS. You lose some disk performance if you merely convert using the command prompt or Logical Disk Manager.

That is good advice. You do lose the ability to change cluster sizes if you convert from FAT32 to NTFS via the conversion tool.

Cheers
Mick

[Mickwish]

Boot form a 98SE or later boot disk. Then delete the non-DOS partition (which is the NTFS partition).

Or you would boot from a win2k / winXP CD and delete the partition that way.

What OS is it by the way?

Cheers
Mick

[lreid]

my main drive is 1 partition, and the second drive has 2 partions on it. will that make any difference?

thanks, lreid