Fat 32

[anewhope]

My mate is runnin NTFS on his XP Pro machine and wants to go back to FAT 32 (For games, dvd playback etc) anyone know how to do it?

I have seen the article on converting FAT to NTFS but not the other way around.

Cheers

 

[Speed4Ever]

Originally posted by anewhope
My mate is runnin NTFS on his XP Pro machine and wants to go back to FAT 32 (For games, dvd playback etc) anyone know how to do it?

I have seen the article on converting FAT to NTFS but not the other way around.

Cheers

You cant go from NTFS > FAT32 in XP, but I believe Partition Magic 7 wil do it, although I dont know what ill effects could happen. If you do try it, I'd back up all important info on that partition, as theres probably a fair chance something could go wrong.

But yes, PM7 claims to be able to do this, but I'm not going to try it

Or you could just back up the info and format to Fat32.

If I might ask, why would you want to do this? Fat32 isnt going to really affect games or DVDs much better than NTFS. I doubt He'd know the difference, and your giving up all the security and stability that NTFS offers.

Sorry, just curious.

 

[wrangler]

I agree with Speed4ever on this

1st - games DON'T CARE what your file system is FAT32 or NTFS and I also doubt he will see an improvement by going back to FAT32. ALSO, NTFS is far superior to FAT32 for video editing and I beleive also for watching any video file of decent size. Like speed4ever said, he'll also lose ALL of the benefits of NTFS....

 

[dArK_CyAnIdE]

just wondering! if i convert to ntfs whats gonna change, how is it better??? and is it good to convert or sould i format in ntfs?

 

[Speed4Ever]

Originally posted by dArK_CyAnIdE
just wondering! if i convert to ntfs whats gonna change, how is it better??? and is it good to convert or sould i format in ntfs?

If you convert, you will almost always notice a slower accessing of files, possibly significantly. You will also notice much more fragmentation than normal. This is because of the 512 KB (am I saying this right? Is it KB, kb, Kb or kB? I can never get that right...) that isnt exactly optimal for the NTFS filesystem. But on the pro side, you will gain good security features and much better stability, due to NTFS being a journaling FS.

I would definitely recommend you reformat and clean install. You will gain a lot of added feature and stability over FAT32, plus its much more efficient than FAT on large partitions (16 gig and above). I would never convert unless you arent able to reinstall for some reason. Reformatting and reinstalling is a bit of a hassle, but its well worth it in the long run.

Hope this helps.

 

[ZipTriX]

What size hard drive? NTFS is recommended for drivers over 32 GB.

 

[Speed4Ever]

I believe the minimum NTFS size is 650 MB.

The reason it is recommended 32 gig and over is that FAT32 is seriously inefficient at that range, as the cluster sizes are quite large at that size, and wasteful on space.

But you can run NTFS at any size partition beyond the minimum 650 MB.

 

[ZipTriX]

Originally posted by Speed4Ever
I believe the minimum NTFS size is 650 MB.

The reason it is recommended 32 gig and over is that FAT32 is seriously inefficient at that range, as the cluster sizes are quite large at that size, and wasteful on space.

But you can run NTFS at any size partition beyond the minimum 650 MB.

never said it wasn't

 

[Speed4Ever]

Originally posted by ZipTriX

never said it wasn't

Sorry, I misunderstood your post. I thought you were asking a question about NTFS partition sizes, blah, blah....

My bad...

 

[ZipTriX]

Originally posted by Speed4Ever


Sorry, I misunderstood your post. I thought you were asking a question about NTFS partition sizes, blah, blah....

My bad...

slow down sometime speed is bad

 

[Gazza]

NTFS - fat32

If you really feel the need to convert back to fat32 the only way to do it is with a format and fdisk.
You really want to lose everything !?

 

[Speed4Ever]

Re: NTFS - fat32

Originally posted by Gazza
If you really feel the need to convert back to fat32 the only way to do it is with a format and fdisk.
You really want to lose everything !?

Partition Magic 7 claims to convert NTFS > Fat32. How reliable it is I dont know, never tried it. But PM7 is known to be fairly reliable if used right...

Now why a person would want to do this is beyond me, but I guess thats only my opinion, and its his computer to with as he pleases