Going from NTFS format BACK to FAT 32?

[webe3]

I am wondering something. I was going to have a SATA hard drive I have, f disked and have the partition removed and have FAT 32 file system put on it. (It has NTFS on it now.) Can you do this? (Go from NTFS back to the FAT 32, if you take off the partition with f disk?) The reason I ask, is because the tech at best buy said that he didn't think it was possible from what he remembered in his training! The reason I want to do this, is becauseI have win xp on a regular WD hard drive (7,200 RPM) that has the FAT 32 file system and I want to use my other Western Digital Raptor hard drive (SATA 10,000 RPM 40 gig) as a slave! So is it possible to go from the NTFS file system backwards to the FAT 32 file system??? By the way, I LIKE the FAT 32 file system MUCH better than NTFS! It just seems to be so much more stable!!

[Wiggo]

fdisk will certainly fix that for ya.

[webe3]

So you CAN get it back to FAT 32 then?? That is GREAT NEWS! Thanks Wiggo!

[Beefy]

You can get it back, but you lose all your data in the process.

[Darthtanion]

Very true... but if you're using fdisk from a boot disk, then you won't be able to see the partition. Once you run fdisk, though, you CAN remove the partition with the utility and then create a new one and format it with FAT32 file system.

[Yawgm0th]

Without getting into another big discussion on FAT32 vs. NTFS, I'll just give you a link to one of the more credible comparisons I have found yet. Just skip to page 15 for the summary.

http://people.msoe.edu/~barnicks/courses/cs384/papers19992000/capriotj-CS384%20-%20Term%20Paper.pdf

In any case, if it's stability your after, FAT32 certainly isn't more stable, read page 14 for proof.

To actually further the answers to your question though, you aren't "going back" to FAT32. Your hard drive doesn't care what file systems have been on it in the past, and neither should you. You just reformat the drive and it works fine.

[webe3]

Without getting into another big discussion on FAT32 vs. NTFS, I'll just give you a link to one of the more credible comparisons I have found yet. Just skip to page 15 for the summary.

http://people.msoe.edu/~barnicks/courses/cs384/papers19992000/capriotj-CS384%20-%20Term%20Paper.pdf

In any case, if it's stability your after, FAT32 certainly isn't more stable, read page 14 for proof.

To actually further the answers to your question though, you aren't "going back" to FAT32. Your hard drive doesn't care what file systems have been on it in the past, and neither should you. You just reformat the drive and it works fine.

Sorry, dude! Your not about to convince me that NTFS is a better file system! For what I use it for, FAT 32 serves me MUCH better than NTFS ever has! And all I meant by going back was that it was like going back to ME....not the drive!

[Yawgm0th]

For what I use it for, FAT 32 serves me MUCH better than NTFS ever has

I didn't know you could have dozens of 200MB partitions.... Something new in Sata?:confused:
FAT32 has it's uses though. One use might be putting your pagefile on a single 200MB partition, I guess, but you would need a lot of RAM. It depends on what your doing in terms of speed, but NTFS is better in any case in terms of efficient disk usage. For partitions over 400MB it has much disk usage. Not to mention file compression. Here's my Windows folder with files that haven't been accessed in 50+ days compressed:

[Yawgm0th]

Damn, I'm slow.
If he's using 98 and not NT\2000\XP then this whole conversation is irrelevant anyway.

Ooh, the edit button comes out....
Better, watch it. No reason to get mad like that at anyone, especially not moderators.:)

[minibubba]

No reason to get mad like that at anyone, especially not moderators.:)

he's just lucky I'm in a forgiving mood tonight. irrelevant posts removed. :smokin:

webe3, if you feel like making any more out busts, I'd suggest you at least watch the language.

[Yawgm0th]

Suppose I might as well follow-up on the relevant thought...

Here's my 98SE install on my FAT32 drive. This clearly shows the problem of having such large clusters on partitions over 2GB.
For further testing, create a .txt file (notepad will open) and enter a few charactes into it. It takes up an entire cluster, so on my 30GB FAT32 partition, 16KB! NTFS only takes up four KB, on any size partiton over 2GB.

[webe3]

he's just lucky I'm in a forgiving mood tonight. irrelevant posts removed. :smokin:

webe3, if you feel like making any more out busts, I'd suggest you at least watch the language.

Fine, then may I suggest YOU watch your smart mouth?? ! I don't care if you are a mod! You have NO right to slam on ME! Now all I wanted to know was if I could get my hard drive back to FAT 32. YOU came on like some idiot and started flaming me for Prefering FAT 32! Then assumed I was using win ME when I was in fact talking about myself and was using win 98se! (Forget the fact that you never asked WHY I was using it, for an old dos game!) I got mad and responded to it! For that I am sorry about the profanity! Now I don't know WHAT I did or said, but I am not afraid of you in the least! Being a mod does not give you a right to be a smartmouth! You assumed things you didn't know about, nor did you ask me! You also flamed me on a public forum. Now if you want to take this to the next level, I will go over YOUR head and take it to the top! It is up to you, but think before you leap! Because I won't tolerate someone acting like I am an idiot just because of the software or file system I choose to use!

[Yawgm0th]

:spam:
*heads for the fallout shelter*

:shoot3: :snip: :shoot2: :hammer:

[minibubba]

Now if you want to take this to the next level, I will go over YOUR head and take it to the top!

: omg: be my guest.
I was doing you a favor by removing those posts. Now I'm going to do you another one; I'm closing this tragedy until you can cool off a bit. If you would like to take this up again in let's say... 24 hours or so, then we will discuss this in a civil manner. Until then, i would suggest you relax. Starting any other threads on this subject will be promptly deleted.