fat32 or nfts

[tippy hetrick]

I HAVE RECENTLY CONVERTED MY COMPUTER WHICH RUNS ON A
FAT32 FILE SYSTEM TO XP FROM 98SE. IS IT WISE OR POSSIBLE
TO CONVERT THE WHOLE FILE SYSTEM TO NFTS? I HAVE A 6 GIG
HARDRIVE AND 512 RAM. I AM ASKING THIS BECUASE I HAVE
OVER 160 FILE FRAGMENTS I CANNOT GET RID OF WITH
DEFRAGGING.

[Chris Jackson]

First of all, there is no reason to shout.

Second, conversion to NTFS is easy - just use the Convert utility. Search in
help and support for instructions on how to use it. Getting from NTFS back
to FAT32 (which I don't know why you'd want to do) is much harder - you need
a third party utility to do that.

--
Chris Jackson
Software Engineer
Microsoft MVP - Windows XP
Windows XP Associate Expert
--
More people read the newsgroups than read my email.
Reply to the newsgroup for a faster response.
(Control-G using Outlook Express)
--

"tippy hetrick" > wrote in message
...
> I HAVE RECENTLY CONVERTED MY COMPUTER WHICH RUNS ON A
> FAT32 FILE SYSTEM TO XP FROM 98SE. IS IT WISE OR POSSIBLE
> TO CONVERT THE WHOLE FILE SYSTEM TO NFTS? I HAVE A 6 GIG
> HARDRIVE AND 512 RAM. I AM ASKING THIS BECUASE I HAVE
> OVER 160 FILE FRAGMENTS I CANNOT GET RID OF WITH
> DEFRAGGING.

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

First of all, please unstick your CapsLock key. Posting in all
caps, as you have done, is the Usenet equivalent of shouting, and is
considered very rude. More importantly, posting in all caps makes the
post very hard to read, further reducing your chances of getting help.

Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is an
option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, and a lot of wasted hard drive space
on volumes larger than 8 Gb in size. But your computing needs may
vary, and there is no hard and fast answer.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by Alex Nichol in the
article here:

FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfs.htm

Somewhat more technical information is here:

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314463

Choosing Between File Systems
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

You can safely convert your hard drive to NTFS whenever desired,
without having to format the partition and reinstall everything. As
always when performing any serious changes, back up any important data
before proceeding, just in case. A little advance preparation is also
strongly recommended, so you can avoid any performance hits caused by
the default cluster size:

Converting FAT32 to NTFS in Windows
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm


Bruce Chambers

--
Help us help you:
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH


"tippy hetrick" > wrote in message
...
> I HAVE RECENTLY CONVERTED MY COMPUTER WHICH RUNS ON A
> FAT32 FILE SYSTEM TO XP FROM 98SE. IS IT WISE OR POSSIBLE
> TO CONVERT THE WHOLE FILE SYSTEM TO NFTS? I HAVE A 6 GIG
> HARDRIVE AND 512 RAM. I AM ASKING THIS BECUASE I HAVE
> OVER 160 FILE FRAGMENTS I CANNOT GET RID OF WITH
> DEFRAGGING.

[Alex Nichol]

tippy hetrick wrote:

>I HAVE RECENTLY CONVERTED MY COMPUTER WHICH RUNS ON A
>FAT32 FILE SYSTEM TO XP FROM 98SE. IS IT WISE OR POSSIBLE
>TO CONVERT THE WHOLE FILE SYSTEM TO NFTS?

See www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfs.htm for considerations. and a link to
advice on converting.

ANd *Please* don't post in CAPS - partly because it is considered to be
shouting, but more because it becomes considerably more difficult to
read, and many people will for that reason simply skip.


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K. (remove the D8 bit)