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Possible problem??

D

Dark Assassin

Gawd
Joined
Apr 10, 2003
Messages
605
This is something I've definitely never attempted before, so I'm not sure how it might turn out.

Basically, someone gave me their old hard drive in an old K6/2 system running Windows 98 SE and the FAT32 file system. They asked me to backup their music and a few files because the actual Windows files were corrupted. I have it connected into my computer, which is running Windows XP and the NTFS file system.

What I want to do is this: Make a folder on my NTFS formatted HD of this person's FAT32 formatted files and store it until I can simply format their hard drive (it's now a storage hard drive for this person since buying a new computer). Then, I want to simply using Partition Magic 8.0 and convert the FAT32 files into the NTFS format since this person's new computer is also NTFS formatted. Then simply put the newly NTFS formatted files back onto the original hard drive in the new format.

My concern is if I might run into error with allocating a chunk of my hard drive to the FAT32 file format before it becomes NTFS formatted. Would my theoretical idea work without any forseeable problems?

Dark Assassin
 
Files/file contents and filesystems are independent. File attributes are filesystem dependent. The only problems you may encounter are permission problems if you copy the files as administrator and give them back to him when he's not admin of his machine. Simply chowning the file as admin on his box will fix it instantly.
 
Honestly, I don't think I'll encounter permission problems though, considering Windows 98SE was that dependent on user access privileges, unless specificallly specified.

I certainly hope that this works, as I'll try it tomorrow.

Dark Assassin
 
Windows 98 didn't care much for permissions, NT/2k/XP do. The user those files are tied to is going to change given that you're converting FAT32-NTFS based on a defunct user account and then putting the drive and contents into the new machine with new users. Windows won't care if given if you run the new machine as single user or just login as an admin, but if you try some restricted access account it may warn you that you don't have access rights.
 
There's another option, leave the old drive in FAT32. Sure it's not as stable as NTFS but it's still readable under XP and 2K.

Reguarding the permissions, you're delving a little too deep. You can copy the files to your computer's drive into a folder, then back to the other drive without any problems. There are no permissions on a FAT32 drive (unless you really want to count Read Only, System, or Hidden). When the files are copied onto an NTFS drive, they will have no permissions set other than Everyone so any user could open them, view them and save them.

It's only if you're copying files from an NTFS drive that already have permissions set to another NTFS drive that you'll have to take ownership of those files. Windows doesn't set permissions based on copying the files, permissions have to be explicitly set. It's not Linux afterall, ;)
 
Thanks all for the ideas, but leaving the drive in FAT32 simply isn't an option. I'm going to format this hard drive specifically because it's going to become an auxiliary storage drive in this person's new computer. All I need to do is copy music and documents to my hard drive, then format the old drive in NTFS, then simply put the music and documents back onto the drive. It's not holding any Windows folders or anything like that after this format.

Basically, the gist of what I'm hearing is that I shouldn't encounter a problem. I'm just still skeptical because I have no idea how my partition (RAID-0 HD's) will respond to a momentary placement of FAT32 formatted files onto it, then they will be taken off.

Dark Assassin
 
Pretty much everyone has told you this already, and you haven't gotten it, so I will try to make it simple.

There is no such thing as a FAT32 or NTFS formatted file. The disks are FAT32 or NTFS, but the files are just files. You can freely copy between them. You can copy the files over and copy them back when you are done. No problem. And your HDs being in RAID has nothing to do with this.
 
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