Appreciate help in converting Drive "C" NTSF to Fat32 without loss of data .... OS Windows XP3.
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Last edited by Baldrick; 21st May 2014 at 07:54. Reason: New title and moved to computer section.
Cheers from downunder. -
Sorry mate, can't be done. It's like changing an old house from a brick foundation to a poured concrete foundation. Well, to be 100% accurate, that can be done (officially) but at extreme labor and expense. You get the point.
The only way is to back up all your data, make sure you have copies of all your programs, and reformat in FAT32. Then install programs and restore data. But I'm sure you are aware of this method. -
I don't know about NTFS -> FAT32 but todays Giveaway Of The Day claims to be able to do FAT32 -> NTFS without dataloss
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For the sake of completeness there is a company that claims their free product can do this:
http://www.disk-partition.com/resource/convert-ntfs-to-fat32-partition.html
I would try it as a "Let's see if this works" curiosity on a spare drive, or o a system that you prepared already to reformat and reinstall, but I would be afraid to try it on a real working system.
--dES"You can observe a lot by watching." - Yogi Bera
http://www.areturningadultstudent.com -
Note that FAT32 cannot store files larger than 4 GB so if you have files larger than this, something bad may happen to them after the conversion. I'd strongly advise backing up anything you can't afford to lose to another place (different physical disk drive, USB drive, flash drive, etc.) BEFORE attempting the conversion. Note that if you have major problems after the conversion it would not be realistic to expect converting back to NTFS to solve those problems. I'm not saying you will have problems, I just want you to understand the larger your drive is and the larger the files are that are on it, the more likely it is to have problems after conversion.
You might wish to tell why you want to do this conversion as if your understanding is wrong and there is a better solution that doesn't involve going to FAT32 to accomplish whatever you want to do, you'd be a lot better off to do something else instead of converting. -
Well, you CAN convert from FAT32 to NTSF without data loss as I have done it in the past.
Now I don't know if you could go from FAT to NTSF although I would think you could but why would you want to ?
And as jman98 stated, if you go to FAT32 you will have issues with any large files over 4gb.
Maybe some more information would get you better or more specific help ?
EDIT:
Goofed, I meant to say "Now I don't know if you could go from NTSF to FAT32.Last edited by Noahtuck; 21st May 2014 at 18:42.
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You can go FAT->FAT32, and then FAT32->NTFS without data loss, using certain MS tools (have used both in the past, don't remember them now).
But going the other way, not likely to happen, and even if it did, jman98 already pointed out the foolishness of attempting that without a backup. (He didn't even mention what might happen to files with encryption, multiple data streams e.g. Mac-type, or Hard/soft links, domain permissions, etc)
And if you are doing a backup, it would be easier just to backup, reformat, restore!
Scott