[rb2d2xp]

During the install of a 500GB external Maxtor HDD I discovered the software would only install on XP or Vista, I have W2K OS. I really don't care about the disk manager or auto backup, can I just delete all the contents (all the files and folders) on the HDD and just use it as any ordinary storage HDD. I have copied all the contents to my internal HDD.

I think I know the answer to this but just to be sure will ask it anyway, it's formatted in the NTFS file format, can I reformat it and use the FAT32 file format?

Thanks for any help you'll can offer.


:heartlove

 

[linderman]

yes you can delete whatever you want and just use it for data storage



I would not suggest using FAT32 on a hard drive larger than 127gig / FAT32 does not support Large Block Addresing & it cant store data files larger than 4 gig either (like dvd videos)

also fat32 in not near as efficient with cluster sizes either which is a waste when used in large drives

fat32 just doesnt have any up side other than win 98 support ??????

Win 2000 doesnt need fat 32 ?????????????

 

[rb2d2]

Win 2000 doesnt need fat 32 ?????????????

Maybe not but I choose FAT32 when I installed it. On the suggestion of the person that was helping me at the time.

Sooooo .... now what?


:sigh:

 

[linderman]

LOL :wink:



http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx

 

[rb2d2]

Thank you, linderman! I had no idea you could do that. After reading at the link you gave me I read around a little bit on the Net and apparently converting FAT32 to NTFS causes the system to slow down a bit. OTOH there seem to be a lot of benifits to having the NTFS file system. I've made images of all my partitions and I think I'm going to try the conversion, in case there is a large difference is speed I can always go back to FAT32.

Thank you again.

:smooch:

 

[linderman]

keep us updated with your progress

 

[rb2d2]

OK, I did the conversion and all went well. I've read that converting from FAT32 to NTFS slows the system down but so far I have not experienced any of that. If anything pages on the Net load faster than before and I've not had any problem opening folders in Explorer as some seemed to have. Folders pop open as fast as ever. All the programs I've tried work fine.

But ... Why did I end up with so many system files?? Not sure exactly what the used space was before but I think I may have as much as 5GB more Space Used.

Here is a SS of a defrag I did before the conversion:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/807/screenshot032ia9.jpg

And here is a screen shot of an analysis display after the conversion, I have not defraged the new setup yet.

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/8830/screenshot033ha0.jpg

Also Disk Cleapup tells me I can save (approx) 1,766,950 kb if I compress old files. Should I do that? I never have before. Here is a SS:

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/5991/screenshot034xj1.jpg

Thanks for any help or advice.


:wave:

 

[rothnd]

Hello all. This conversation appears to be right up my ally so I thought I'd write and see if any of you could answer some questions.

I recently purchased an Apple Airport Extreme with the supposed capability to attach an external hard drive (I also have the 500 GB Maxtor One Touch) to be networked. I'm running this on a Win XP system (makes things interesting). Anyway, I've been told that in order for the network to use the drive it must be converted from the NTFS system it is currently in to the old FAT32 system.

First I'd like to know, is this true?? Second, is there anything else I can do to avoid the problems everyone speaks of when making this conversion?

As a side note. When I first attached the drive to the Extreme it did recognize that a drive was present, however, it said that there was a problem encountered and that the drive needed to be directly connected to the pc to fix it. So, I did that and then reconnected it to the Extreme and the same thing happened over and over again.

Any thoughts/directions? Thanks!