Converting FAT to NTFS - Comments Page 1

Bob - My PC is in the Windows XP FAT 32 format. I have known for sometime now that a NTFS is a more secure format for your hard drive. Doesn't mean that it is completely safe, just more secure.

Please, answer this, I have always kept the FAT 32 format, to play a lot of my older Win98 games, that I love to play. I have several favorites that I have been playing for over 10 years now. If, memory serves me correctly, I had difficulties trying to play them, when I formatted my hard drive to Windows XP NTFS format. Am I correct on this or am I just 'all wet'? LOL

Now, I know that with the older Windows NT versions, you could have great difficulties getting many of your components drivers to work, especially if you didn't have the latest driver. That was another reason why I kept the FAT 32 format, simply for the Plug n' Play aspect.

I am NOT ready to even TRY Windows Vista! I am still very pleased with Windows XP. My PC rarely crashes and the restorative aspects are so much easier, than when I used Windows 98. I am not prone to doing a lot of Betas, but, should I try out one or two and they don't work right, I can easily 'Restore' to a previous date and my PC is back to where it was.

So, I guess my question is, "Is there really a big advantage in converting your Fat 32 to a NTSF? Being more secure is only one advantage and I have my PC fairly well protected with a good Anti-Virus program - AVG and a good spyware/malware program - Ad-Aware 2008. Both of these are the FREE versions and for me, with what I do on the Internet, they have been doing fine and my PC is secure. So, what are the other advantages? Thanks, for the great article.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think having FAT or NTFS will affect the way any games work. I still run 15-year-old DOS programs every day on my XP with NTFS. As for the advantages of NTFS, it boils down to performance, improved security and reliability.

Bob - Thank you so much, for your quick response to my question. You have answered my question with the best reason ever, you still run 15 year old DOS programs on your XP with NTFS. I will convert my FAT 32 to a NTFS, tonight.

Bob - I apologize, for making so many comments on this subject. However, as I started to try to 'convert' my XP FAT 32 system to a NTFS system, I realized that I needed a bit more information on how to actually do this. I did what you suggested, but couldn't find the word 'Convert', I only saw the word 'Format'. It is probably the same thing, however, I wanted to be sure that I did this correctly.

Bottom line, I went to Microsoft's Support section and found this page that literally takes you step by step through the process, even warning you of how to handle any 'error(s)' that may occur.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314097/en-us

Bob- I recently bought a new hard drive and upon trying to load Windows on it, an error occurs saying the ntsf.sys is corrupted. I talked to customer service and they said I needed to change the BIOS configuration to ATA. I'm not sure how to do that and was wondering if there is a better way to convert from FAT to NTFS without windows? Thanks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The FAT or NTFS formatting has nothing to do with BIOS. The tech was probably telling you that your BIOS (or motherboard) supports IDE (ATA) and you have a SATA drive -- or vice versa.

Bob, I bought a 500GB USB portable HD. It was formatted with FAT32, but I need to copy large files (about 20gb), so I used “convert” tool in order to change to NTFS.

Convert say that everything gone fine, and now I can copy my “fat” files.

What it is very strange now is that I can’t delete any file using file explorer. I can read, create, copy, change, but not delete any file. I tried chkdsk with no error. As last chance I tried to delete files from the console (cmd) with “del” and even with “rd” command and this works well. Any Idea?

EDITOR'S NOTE: What happens when you try to delete the file using Explorer?

Bob, I did the conversion from FAT32 to NTFS. It worked fine however, I still only have 5.54GB used spaced and 325 MB Free space. How do I fix the problem?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Converting to NTFS will not compress your data. Sounds like you're ready for a bigger drive.

I'm thinking of converting my FAT32 drive to NTFS on WinXP but my pc has a piece of recovery software on it called Mirrordisk that effectively restores the pc to the factory defaults if needed. If i change to NTFS will it either stop Mirrordisk from working or will Mirrordisk cause problems with the drive if it tries to restore it back to a FAT32 drive (if it even does that, i'm not sure!) Thanks for your help.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think the switch to NTFS will cause any problem.

I have data that i need to share between Macs & PCs. As i recall one of these formats (FAT or NTFS) is not readable on a Mac. Can you tell me which will work in a mixed computing environment?

EDITOR'S NOTE: FAT32 and NTFS are readable by Mac OS, but not writable. You can also use MacDrive for the PC, which will allow it to read Mac OS partitions.

Question: I have a newer system running XP on a newly replaced 1tb sata hardrive. Everything is fine. I want to use my older 300gb sata hardrive for backup storage. When I format the 300gb hardrive is there anything else I need to do, or just plug it in and start adding files? Does the "storage" hardrive need an operating system installed, or does it need to be converted to NTFS if its just for storage? Thanks.

I find it interesting that NTFS is not compatable with W98 or is that true of W98 but not true of W98se? As of April 2009 I installed WXP Home to replace W98se on this computer but had converted the two hard drives to NTFS a long time ago and had no dificulty with the conversion and no dificulty with the WXP Home installation. My interest in this article stems from wanting to convert a hard drive that came with WXP Home but has FT32. I will be converting that drive today thanks to your article.

Thanks for sharing this.
and i convert the FAT partition to NTFS easily with this freeware. just wanna share it.
http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/convert-partition.htm