NTFS and FAT32

[mabuta]

I have 2 hard drives on my system, both NTFS, and want to install ME on one of them (there is no operating system on one of them and I don't want to loose those files). ME formats at FAT32. Will I still be able to access the files on the drive with NTFS?

 

[zyfos]

Well, if you are wanting to install ME on the secondary harddrive, I suggest backing up all the files from that drive to your primary drive. Format all/part of the secondary drive to Fat32 and install ME on it. Windows XP will be able to see and use the files on NTFS and Fat32 partions, but ME can only see files on Fat32. If you want to share files between the 2 operating systems, you can put them on the Fat32 partition.

 

[scsa20]

is one of your drive alreadly have an OS on it?? is it WinNT, 2000, or XP?? first of all, if there's an OS alreadly installed that's newer then ME then it's best to install ME first before the newer version of Windows... but anways, just makes sure that you make a partition that's FAT32 so you can copy a file from ME to it and you could just fire up the one that's using NTFS and copy it or if your too lazy, just going into OS that uses NTFS and copying the file from the FAT32 OS to the one using NTFS OS (since NTFS could read and write to FAT32 partitions)...

 

[lechtard]

Acronis Partition expertis supposed to be able to do a format of the drive without data loss - so if you convert the ntfs to fat 32 with it you should be able to keep the files .. but the safest bet is to do like stated above - back the files up and do a fdisk and put the files back on .. Fat 32 will not see ntfs ..

Or you could transfer the files you want to keep from one drive to the other (if you have the space) then when you put me in, put them back ..

 

[mabuta]

Thanks for the assist

Thanks for the info.

 

[syn]

i recommend against using ME considering it is a really ****ey O/S, but you can partition part of the second drive in FAT32 and just install there...go with win98se, much better and clearly more stable than ME