NTFS to FAT32?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anomaly
  • Start date Start date
I would love to write one or two files to DVD, but Ghost cannot produce
Not sure about Ghost 9, but all other versions can write 2GB files.
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Neither I, so 3 x 1.43GB is better than 2 x 2.0GB for DVD.
 
Not being very experienced with NTFS, I suppose my misgivings are due to the
fact that I could always rely on DOS as a way to deal with any system
problems, restore images, copy files, etc., but I'm starting to get the idea
that the NTFS resources are available to accomplish anything that I could do
in DOS (correct me if I
I'm wrong). Any other recommendations or info that you feel could be helpful
would be appreciated. If not, thanks for the info you've dispensed thus
far...

Thanks,
Anom
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It is smart to proceed cautiosly with upgrades but the fact is that
with a more reliable OS (win2k/XP/2003) and NTFS on good hardware that
is managed and maintained properly, there are very few instances where
you actually need low level recovery abilities like fixing stuff from
dos (compared to similar efforts with FATx or Win9x). When you do
have problems there is still the windows recovery console. I think
all of the best third party utilities have already been mentioned and
are worth looking into/trying out.
 
Anomaly said:
Is there anyway to convert an NTFS partition back to FAT 32? If so, any
caveats to doing so?

Thanks!
Anom
Click to expand...


Anomaly said:
Is there anyway to convert an NTFS partition back to FAT 32? If so, any
caveats to doing so?

Thanks!
Anom
Click to expand...


After much consideration based on information in this thread (and other
sources), I now understand that the limitations I felt existed in NTFS
aren't quite what I imagined them to be. Thanks for all the responses That
being said, I would like to impose yet once more with another few questions:

1) Since converting existing FAT 32 volumes via windows "convert" command
doesn't produce the same performance benefits as an initially NTFS formatted
volume, is it better to wait to convert my C:\ partition to NTFS until I
have time to re-format to NTFS (which would require re-installing all apps,
etc.), or would using a third party program such as BING provide the
benefits that the "convert" command alone cannot, especially since BING
provides the ability to "slide" the data into proper alignment in order to
accomodate 4kb clusters before using Window's "convert" command to partition
to NTFS? IOW, is the cluster size issue the only limiter to full performance
benefits when converting an existing FAT 32 partition via windows "convert"?

2) There are other systems in my small network that I will not be converting
to NTFS, some XP Pro and some 9x (I understand that 9x systems will not be
able to read the NTFS drives...I assume that the NTFS systems can read the
9x FAT systems). Other than the file size limitation, are there other
caveats that may exist between the NTFS and the non-NTFS machines?

3) Are there any caveats that I should be aware of? The machines I will be
converting to NTFS are my main systems, with which I run my business and
also use for various other tasks, including video (editing, recording,
transfering, burning, etc.) recording Internet audio, image editing, and
other tasks.
Should I expect a noticeable reduction in performance?

------------------------------

A comment:
After the conversations in this thread regarding partition imaging, I dusted
off Acronis 7 (I've been using DI 2002 and Ghost 2000) and it seems that it
will serve my purposes nicely, including the image restoration and rescue
booting aspects. The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't
accurately estimate the resulting image file size and it doesn't compress
the files to the smaller file sizes that DI and Ghost do (the reason I
stopped using TI...) .

I *do* appreciate the fact that, unlike Ghost and DI, it doesn't limit the
image file sizes to 2GB (You may appreciate this, Peter). I just created an
image of my C:\ partition and, to my surprise, the resulting image was an
"unsplit" 4.3 GB!! You can, of course, specify a point at which you want the
file to split.

Anyway, thanks again for all the input, and any further comments, advice or
tips are welcome.

Thanks,
Anom
 
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