Topic: Caddy drive FAT32 to NTFS

[daveeb]

Hi Guys n gals

Is there any way i can convert an IDE caddy drive from fat32 to ntfs using the disk management program in windows xp. I've been told fat32 can cause various audio sync problems when burning video files from it.  I've also been told to use Partition Magic but a) i dont have it and b) i've had problems with older versions of it in the past.

Assuming there is a way is there a likeliehood of losing data in the process or does it format the disc first.  Soooo many questions  

[Sandra]

You should be able to do it in XPs Disk Managent section but there is a possibility of losing data during the conversion.

The best way, if you can, is to save the data to another drive and format it as an NTFS partition.
Bear in mind that if you later want to use the external drive on a 98 or ME pc that it wont be able to "see" anything on it.

Another way to do it safely, if you have less than 50% of your drive used and have nowhere else to save the data to for formatting it is to use Partition Magic.
Create a new partition with it using approximately 50% of the drives capacity.
It will save the existing data on to the first partition and make a new one that you can format as NTFS.
Then move the data from partition 1 to the second one and format that partition as NTFS.
Then if you like you can merge the partitions again using Partition Manager.

Bit fiddly but if you cant save all the data to format the drive its possibly the safest way  

[daveeb]

Ta Sandra. I should just be able fit  the files on another drive.  

[daveeb]

Well mission half accomplished.  The ide caddy drive is 120 GB.  The main original partition is 110 GB and the other is 10 GB.  The big partition formatted to ntfs fine tho' it took about half an hour.  The other partition went through the motions but afterwards is still showing in disk management as fat32.  Its not really a  problem as i'm using it to store backup files and using the main partition for video files.
 :?