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Should I bother converting to NTFS?

Monkey34

Monkey34

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Well, here's the dilemma( I KNOW...I should have started with a clean format, and install....but I'm too far gone for that). I've got a computer with a 120gig HDD, with 50gigs of stuff on it. The thing was a Win Me upgrade that is using FAT32. Its been stable, but in my continuous effort to tweak/mess around, I'm considering a NTFS conversion. ;)
My problem is I dont have a second HDD to image the system to, but want to do the conversion. Has anyone lost their operating system/files/games doing this? I really want to keep all my stuff, so a crash would have the result of adding one more to the looney-ward of the local mental facility. :rolleyes:
 
I've done the FAT32 to NTFS conversion many times and it has always went smooth without problems. The benefits of NTFS are well worth the conversion from FAT32. It would be very wise to backup your stuff first by any means possible, but if the machine is stable you shouldn't have a problem.
 
The conversation has always worked for me as well. I highly recommend NTFS.
 
there is a difference between an upgraded ntfs and a newly formatted ntfs. minor, but to the obsessive compulsive..........
 
I used to think there were compatability issues, but after using it for at least two years, I have found none. NTFS all the way :)
 
Yes Id highly recommend you convert
but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it
(from a performance and efficiency standpoint)
the right way to do it > http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

There are a couple of things to do in advance if the conversion is to be efficient. If you do not take these preliminary steps, you are liable to end up with only 512 byte clusters, which is not a good idea.

What happens is that FAT32 partitions formatted by most Windows versions except Windows XP itself (and possibly Windows 2000) have an odd multiple of 2 kilobytes in the “system” sectors before the data area, where the File Allocation Tables themselves and clustering start. Therefore, clusters 4 KB in size are not aligned on 4 KB boundaries, as NTFS will want. CONVERT.EXE, finding it cannot use 4K clusters, gives up and makes the clusters only 512 bytes (one half KB) instead. (For a table of the varying default cluster sizes used by FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS for partitions of varying sizes, click here.)
Click to expand...

see link for full article and embedded links ;)

but I always recommend full backup, and now is as good a time as any
alternately youd be able to image to a different partition on that HDD if there was space and the partition strategy in place to do it
you could convert one primary partition at a time
 
Good articles. I learned some new stuff today. I've got enough room to create a partition for the backup, so I'm going to go that route for now.
The future will be a complete re-format.........but not for a while. I figure I'll do that when I've finally squeezed all the life from my P3, and upgrade the motherboard and processor (as well as clean out all the accumulated stuff I've got saved on the HDD). ;)
 
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