Hispanic82023 Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 Something is wrong with my WinXP, so I feel like reformating and reinstalling it. I currently have 2 harddrives each fat32. My main hd is 30Gigs and my other HD is 20gigs (i use it to store a lot of important stuff.. videos, mp3's, documents.. etc) Now, I want to format my main hard drive to NTFS. Now the problem is.. what about my 2nd hard drive. I don't want to format it because it will take me weeks to back up all that stuff. Can NTFS read fat32? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+primortal Subscriber² Posted January 24, 2002 Subscriber² Share Posted January 24, 2002 XP can read both FAT32 and NTFS. If I remember correctly you do not need reformat the second drive. The 'convert' command should be able to convert the second drive to NTFS without any problems (not responsible for any damages or loss of data ). Any one else know if convert is on XP? Don't have the system infront of me to check. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hareball82 Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 it's a question as to whether NTFS can read fat...they don't read each other... i'm not really following what you are asking.... but.. WinXP reads Fat32 and NTFS.... EDIT - i'm on a 2k machine at the moment, but assuming nothing has changed between 2k and xp, use this to convert the second drive to ntfs if that's what you want (i have done this many, many times without loss of data): CONVERT volume /FS:NTFS [/V] volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name. /FS:NTFS Specifies that the volume to be converted to NTFS. /V Specifies that Convert should be run in verbose mode. ...so.... convert [second hd letter] /FS:NTFS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hispanic82023 Posted January 24, 2002 Author Share Posted January 24, 2002 Thanks for the reply. XP does have the convert command. But I don't care too much about converting my 2nd hd, so I was wondering if I only formatted my first hard drive to ntfs and left my 2nd hd as fat32.. Will XP recognize the fat32 drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hareball82 Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 yes, xp reads ntfs and fat32, i used to do it...but i prefer ntfs for its security...so both of my drives are ntfs ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Defiantly Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 NTFS can read FAT32 FAT32 cannot read an NTFS partition Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hareball82 Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 partitions don't read one another...the OS is doing the reading...and yes...XP reads and writes to Fat32...and NTFS.... MS-DOS won't read/write NTFS....for example (unless you get an add-on, i believe) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mortensen Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 I formatted my main drive to NTFS and then decided to convert my main drive [with all my important data on] to NTFS... I thought it would probably mess up but to my surprise it worked flawlessly [though takes a little while]. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hispanic82023 Posted January 24, 2002 Author Share Posted January 24, 2002 Okay thanks guys for the reply. One question though.. since ms-dos can't read ntfs. How would one be able to update the motherboard or video card bios? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hareball82 Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 you wouldn't be accessing the Hard drive if you were say, flashing your video bios or your motherboard bios. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hispanic82023 Posted January 24, 2002 Author Share Posted January 24, 2002 oh yeah.. that's true.. you just use a bootdisk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hareball82 Posted January 24, 2002 Share Posted January 24, 2002 no problem, glad i could help ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteA_UK Posted January 25, 2002 Share Posted January 25, 2002 I agree with what you are trying to do, by leaving your main data HDD as a FAT32 drive, will enable you to plug it into a different computer is ever your OS 'goes wonky'. Also you may incur problems if you mess up any of the ownership or permissions on an NTFS drive (such as making a file unopenable) If ever you need to access your HDD from a DOS type prompt, you can either use the recovery console from your windows boot disk (this works with 2k pro and server and ought to from xp) or create a dos boot disk with NTFS4DOS on it (which can be obtained over the net) What you may be thinking of by OS's not reading FAT32, is windows NT, this OS cannot read or write to FAT32 drives without being patched by a 3rd party (and likewise OS's below windows 98 cannot read NTFS without a 3rd party patch) pete a Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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