Fat32

teammatt3's picture

He has: 2,102 posts

Joined: Sep 2003

I am backing up all my data on a little 10 gig hd. I tried reformatting it before putting the backup on it, but it only allows me to reformat in FAT32. My main HD with XP on it is NTFS. Can I transfer files to the FAT32 (backup HD) from a NTFS (Has XP), and then copy them back onto the main HD when I reinstall windows on the main HD?

Thanks.

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

you should be able to do that with no problem. I think the only thing you might loose if file permissions (who owns the file), but the file itself will be fine. I have a 80gig HD i put in a USB enclosure and it is fat32.

-Greg

teammatt3's picture

He has: 2,102 posts

Joined: Sep 2003

Thanks Greg. Smiling

But if anything goes wrong... :flame:

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

just an assurance... the NTFS makes records of youre file (e.g where it is at for faster searches) which is not available anymore on a fat32 hdd... the file will be ok though...

He has: 16 posts

Joined: Mar 2006

you haven't tried formatting the drive in fat32 and then converting to ntfs winxp has a command that will allow you to do this.......but yes since a big change in fat32 to ntfs was security you will lose file permissions......

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Renegade's picture

He has: 3,022 posts

Joined: Oct 2002

If you choose the format option when you install Windows XP, it should format the disk as NTFS.

If all else fails, get a Linux Live CD which can format to NTFS. Smiling

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