Convert FAT32 to NTFS

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Ridgeway
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Bill Ridgeway

Is it considered safe to convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS (having first made a
backup, of course)?

Bill Ridgeway
 
Bill said:
Is it considered safe to convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS (having
first made a backup, of course)?
Click to expand...

Exactly what you said, reverse the first two words and change the question
mark to a period.
 
Shenan Stanley said:
Exactly what you said, reverse the first two words and change the question
mark to a period.
Click to expand...

The consensus of opinion confirms my view that it IS safe to convert a FAT32
volume to NTFS. OK now that's been established now for the crunch question.
I converted my Garmin SatNav (mass storage device) in the expectation it
would increase the speed of operation - as it normally does. The outcome
was a SatNav which failed to boot up. I can only assume that the cause was
the conversion to NTFS - unless, by co-incidence, something else was in
play.

Is there something peculiar to mass storage devices that would cause this
problem?

Bill Ridgeway
 
Hello,

The operating system that Garmin uses most likely does not read NTFS
formatted drives. This is the case with most portable devices. You will need
to move all data out, format to FAT32 and move the data back in.

By 'safe', we meant that the data would not get corrupted during the
conversion process and XP would still be able to boot up with a drive
converted to NTFS from FAT.

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Singapore Computer Home Remote On-Site Repair Service
 
Bill said:
Is it considered safe to convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS (having first made a
backup, of course)?

Bill Ridgeway
Click to expand...


In most cases, yes.

You can safely convert your current 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://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot
 
I've yet to have the conversion process go wrong. A powercut could be
serious, though. So don't try it whilst Thor is doing his hammer-workout!

By default, user-permissions will be added, which may have implications if
there are shared folders within userprofiles. If you don't want this to
happen, add the /nosecurity switch.
 
<snipped>
I've yet to have the conversion process go wrong. A powercut could
be serious, though. So don't try it whilst Thor is doing his
hammer-workout!

By default, user-permissions will be added, which may have
implications if there are shared folders within userprofiles. If
you don't want this to happen, add the /nosecurity switch.
Click to expand...

In this case - it was not the conversion process that went awry - but
converting somehting that should not have been converted.

In other words - a poor decision due to lack of knowledge due to lack of
research. ;-)

Entire conversation:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...e_frm/thread/b31f5d95412f591/ff2895fb1347fb95

Relevant section below...

Bill said:
The consensus of opinion confirms my view that it IS safe to
convert a FAT32 volume to NTFS. OK now that's been established now
for the crunch question. I converted my Garmin SatNav (mass storage
device) in the expectation it would increase the speed of operation
- as it normally does. The outcome was a SatNav which failed to
boot up. I can only assume that the cause was the conversion to
NTFS - unless, by co-incidence, something else was in play.

Is there something peculiar to mass storage devices that would
cause this problem?
Click to expand...


So converting your third party device (like a Garmin) to NTFS is bad -
because it is unlikely said device is running an application that would be
able to read NTFS. ;-)
 
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