Author Topic: Quick Question  (Read 6386 times)

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Offline bob3160

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Quick Question
« on: September 02, 2006, 06:44:24 PM »
I've just added a WD250 Gig External USB2 Hard Drive.
It's formatted as Fat32. What's the quickest way to change it over to NTFS ?
Thanks
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Offline szc

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2006, 06:58:57 PM »
Do not convert it Bob. It's never good to do that because of the size of clusters will change (decrease).

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-55-Is-there-a-way-to-convert-FAT32-to-NTFS-5051-with-a-specific-cluster-size.html

Do a full reformat, not the quick format. Unless you have some data on it... if there is not much of data, I would manually copy everything (not using some backup utility as Ghost is, you don't wanna copy FAT32 format too) to some other hard drive first, reformat your new HD and then paste back all your data.

See here:

Quote
It is easy to convert partitions to NTFS. The Setup program makes conversion easy, whether your partitions used FAT, FAT32, or the older version of NTFS. This kind of conversion keeps your files intact (unlike formatting a partition). If you do not need to keep your files intact and you have a FAT or FAT32 partition, it is recommended that you format the partition with NTFS rather than convert from FAT or FAT32. Formatting a partition erases all data on the partition and allows you to start with a clean drive.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/choosing_between_ntfs_fat_and_fat32.mspx?mfr=true
« Last Edit: September 02, 2006, 07:04:13 PM by S.Z.Craftec »
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Offline bob3160

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2006, 07:11:58 PM »
Thanks Sasha.  :)
It's busy formatting. Copied the few files that came on the disk to a usb secure drive and will
copy it back in a few hrs.  ;D
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Offline szc

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2006, 07:29:45 PM »
Exactly, and you won't regret spending few extra minutes doing full format, trust me  ;)

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Offline DavidR

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #4 on: September 02, 2006, 08:20:10 PM »
Conversion from fat32 to ntfs using the windows convert function would give a cluster size of 0.5KB the suggested windows optimum is a cluster size of 4KB.

There are programs like Partition Magic that can also resize clusters without harm to existing data. The format as Sasha mentions is by far the best option and cause you less overall grief.
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Mastertech

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #5 on: September 23, 2006, 06:13:39 PM »
That is actually not true, this is wide spread Myth only because convert in Windows 2000 had this problem, convert in XP defaults to the most optimal cluster size from the existing FAT volume.

XP Myths

Offline bob3160

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2006, 08:11:12 PM »
That is actually not true, this is wide spread Myth only because convert in Windows 2000 had this problem, convert in XP defaults to the most optimal cluster size from the existing FAT volume.

XP Myths
At this point Mastertech myth or not, it's already long since been done.  :)
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Offline szc

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #7 on: September 23, 2006, 09:56:47 PM »
Myth or not, in this case I still believe that nice and clean NTFS format is always better than some conversion from FAT32. Best of all, it won't even take much longer to complete than conversion procedure, in a matter of fact I believe that conversion procedure takes little bit longer.
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Offline igor

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #8 on: September 23, 2006, 10:04:07 PM »
Now, the question is if it was really that advantageous to convert to NTFS in the first place ;D

Offline szc

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #9 on: September 23, 2006, 10:07:18 PM »
Well, if nothing else, access to data stored on HD should be faster and also NTFS is supposed to be much safer too.
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Offline igor

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #10 on: September 23, 2006, 10:15:23 PM »
Faster? Why's that? NTFS is a more complex format (compared to FAT) - so the disk access will probably be slower. Don't think it will be significant, but in my opinion it certainly won't be faster.
Safer... well sure, FAT doesn't support access control, encryption and stuff like that - but if it's an external disk, it may not be what you really need.

OK, there may be one important point to convert to NTFS - on FAT partition you won't be able to create files bigger than 4GB, which is a limit these days.

Offline szc

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2006, 01:04:32 AM »
...
...
OK, there may be one important point to convert to NTFS - on FAT partition you won't be able to create files bigger than 4GB, which is a limit these days.


Exactly, and knowing Bob, I am sure there will be little bit more than just few of those 4.5 Gb ISO files involved on that drive...  ;D  ;D  ;D
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dk70

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #12 on: September 24, 2006, 01:07:56 AM »
NTFS is way ahead of FAT32 in many areas but what you will notice is much more efficient use of hard disk. No big fat cluster size and just using 1 partition for whole hd is no problem. Forget about old "optimized"/split FAT32/FAT partitions. Huge difference to FAT32 when it comes to wasted space.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/winpreinst/ntfs-preinstall.mspx

Mastertech

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Re: Quick Question
« Reply #13 on: September 24, 2006, 01:36:55 AM »
The reason I posted this is to clarify it for the future. And a reason you would want to convert instead of format is if you don't want to lose your data. Yes formating is always the first choice but at least people now know that converting in XP will not reduce performance due to the Windows 2000 512 K cluster size converting issue.

As for performance NTFS is faster and more efficient than FAT on large volumes. NTFS offering poor performance is another myth: More Gaming Muscle: FAT32 or NTFS?
« Last Edit: September 24, 2006, 02:01:49 AM by Mastertech »