Re: Converting system partition to NTFS
- From: "John John (MVP)" <audetweld@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:52:10 -0400
We have no way of knowing how Acer prepared the drive, many OEM's still use rather antiquated tools to prepare and deploy their images so we don't know what to expect from these OEM installations. Your best bet would be to follow the advice at http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm . You don't need a floppy drive to do this, there is a CD version of the BootItNG utility, just download that one and burn it to CD. The conversion process is usually trouble free but keep in mind that there is *always* a risk of data loss with these type of disk operations, although problems are rare they do at time happen and when they do there is usually a catastrophic loss of data. Best to be prepared, make sure that you have a working backup of your data files!
John
Herbert Eppel wrote:
Hello,.
For some reason the Acer laptop I bought around 18 months ago came with FAT32 and not NTFS as expected, and I have been thinking of converting it to NTFS for some time.
However, having read the warnings at <http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm> I was and still am somewhat concerned about the possibility of messing things up, not least because the laptop doesn't have a floppy drive so that I can't actually follow the instructions at <http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm>.
In view of the fact that the drive was formatted under XP, am I right in concluding from John's statement that the alignment process is only necessary *if the drive was formatted by an OS other than XP* that I can do the conversion directly, i.e. without the alignment?
Thank you.
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk
On 07.02.2009 13:58 UK Time, John John (MVP) wrote:The native and preferred file system for Windows XP is NTFS, unless you have very compelling reasons to do otherwise you should always install Windows XP on NTFS. "...so that you can repair or troubleshoot via command line because your GUI won't boot up" is not a very compelling reason to install Windows XP on FAT32, this is a notion perpetuated by well meaning Windows 9x users who think that FAT32 is better because it allows you to boot to DOS and access your disk if you run into problems. You should put this idea to rest, there are better tools than DOS to use to service a non booting Windows XP installation and these tools can read NTFS without problems.
If you want to convert your FAT32 drive and if the drive was formated by an operating other than Windows XP read the information here before you proceed: http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm
John
Ludwig77 wrote:
I have heard that while NTFS is a good format for data partitions, the
system partition should be FAT32 so that you can repair or
troubleshoot via command line because your GUI won't boot up.
But my system partition is running out of space. Now, I could move my
My Documents to another partition, but I was wondering if my initial
assumptions are even correct and if there are any significant
consequences to converting my system partition to NTFS.
If I could do this, then I could merge my system partition with the
adjacent one.
- References:
- Converting system partition to NTFS
- From: Ludwig77
- Re: Converting system partition to NTFS
- From: John John (MVP)
- Converting system partition to NTFS
- Prev by Date: Re: Crash opening large folder in thumbnaill view
- Next by Date: Re: Converting system partition to NTFS
- Previous by thread: Re: Converting system partition to NTFS
- Next by thread: Re: Converting system partition to NTFS
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
