Fat32/NTFS

[uufta]

HI
Three months ago when I got this HP, I wasnt paying much attention, but I thought my Drive had two Fat32 partitions 70-10, one is a locked pre-installed bundled software location,
Then I installed a WD 160G Drive and split it in two, again I thought those were two Fat32 partitions, then somewhere along the line, the three working drives turned into NTFS, I know this is not a bad thing, but how can it just happen?, what program did I install that changed these? and , will I have trouble if I have to go into that Fat32 drive to restore stuff to the NTFS drive.

Thankyou again

gc

[Zero G]

That's a weird one. The NTFS drives will see the FAT32, but FAT32 will not see what is on the NTFS.

[techreactor]

HI
will I have trouble if I have to go into that Fat32 drive to restore stuff to the NTFS drive.

No, you wont have problems and you wont have to do the restore manually, since you will have something like the Quick restore/ Recovery console bundled and installed in your HP desktop, its usually a one touch restore and incase of problem, everthing will be restored/reinstalled automatically.

Its a recovery partition, dont fiddle with it on your own.

[benbryant]

Hi uufta,

The first partition (FAT)32 is designed to hold your HP Recovery system, in case you need to reinstall the windows, you can run from there without using the recovery discs. Don't do anything to alter this partition please.The secong partition (NTSC) is the heart of your OS. The last 2 partitions (NTSC) with almost 75 GB each are great for video and graphics. If I were you, I would create a small partition about 2 or 3 GB infront of the last 2 partitions for swap file or page file. You or someone may have installed a formatted the second HDD to NTSC from raw

Regards

[uufta]

Hi

I installed the second Hardrive with WD software, and partitioned it, but afterwards I am pretty sure everything was Fat32, all four partitions on both drives.
You can tell the first 80gb used to be Fat32 on both parts because thats the way it came from HP.
Everything runs fine, I was just curious of what could have changed these to NTFS.
I am not going to mess with anything, but I thought that was a choice the operator makes at some point to choose Fat32/NTFS, I never did.

Thanks

gc

[Chewy]

nothing changed! the recovery partition is fat 32 because it's small and can be accessed from dos. Anything over 32 gigs should be ntfs, as per MS reccomendation. You could have chosen fat32 for the second partition on the extra drive, but it would have been a mistake.

[uufta]

Hi

Sorry to bother everybody with a non-problem, just curious

thanks
gc

[Chewy]

I fought switching to NTFS for a long time, even used fdisk boot floppys
to keep it with windows xp, very valid question and worth discussing.

Fat32 is faster but very dangerous with today's faster larger hard drives.

[uufta]

Hi

Since you are not mad at me yet, I will ask another Question.
Now, I remember from the old days, (from a galaxy far,far away) that you cannot have two bootable drives on the same computer.
My question is : is there a way around that? since I have that new second drive split in two and I have it on cable select can I make one part bootable then change it to a slave drive so it doesnt try to boot, (or leave it cable select) that way I could transfer the setup I have now, with the Western Digital software (Disk to Disk or whatever its called) and not have to go all the way back to the original setup from HP.
What I have now is how I want it for the forseeable future.

Thanks
gc

[Chewy]

another good question!

that you cannot have two bootable drives on the same computer

actually you can if both are set active, just let bios decide which to boot to.

you can go ahead and set the new drive active from drive management,
and then just make it master after the transfer, switch cabling and even drive positions, you'll have to go into bios

[uufta]

Hi

Cool,
I am going to do some reading up on this and come back, maybe I'll need a little hand-holdin thru this stuff, if thats ok? Is WD's Drive to Drive Tool good for this?
Can you leave it on "cable - select" or does it have to be master/slave?

thanks again
gc

[Chewy]

remember cable select has the master as furthest away from mobo.
I don't like it tho as sometimes it gets confused.

WD tool should be able to do the transfer

[nwg]

I have a similar setup on my laptop. It came with a 60GB FAT32 drive split into C and D drives. I converted it to NTFS and while in disk management. I noticed it has a 2GB hidden partiton for recovery with 700MB used. This was still FAT32 as it is not seen in any other window programs. I have left it alone and don't plan to use it as I use Ghost to backup the whole drive (inc the recovery files)

[uufta]

Hi nwg

You say you converted it?

gc

[nwg]

Hi nwg

You say you converted it?

gc

I didn't convert the recovery part of the hard disk as that was hidden and cannot be selected. I converted the rest of the hard disk.