[GRLUG] fat32 to ntfs

[Rich Nagel]

I just "googled" the same command in quotes and got the following link at 
Microsoft's site:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

Frankly, were it me, at the very least I'd take an image or make a backup of 
the partition in question before attempting this conversion command.  My 
preference though would be to image/backup the data, delete the partition in 
question and create another natively NTFS (or whatever you want) from the 
start.

Rich

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Mol" <mikemol at gmail.com>
To: <grlug at grlug.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: [GRLUG] fat32 to ntfs


> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 4:59 PM, Benjamin Flanders <flanderb at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>> Short question:
>> How can I convert a large partition from fat32 to ntfs without loss of
>> data?  Basically does changing cluster size reformat the partition?
>>
>> Googleing, I found that fat32 to ntfs is a simple "convert drive
>> letter: /fs:ntfs" this can be done without lose of data.
>
> Is this a Windows command?  I hadn't heard of it.
>
> Otherwise, NTFS and FAT32 are fundamentally different; Your best bet
> would be to attack a large external disk to the system, format it as
> NTFS, and use cp -ra to copy the files from your FAT32 disk to your
> NTFS disk.  Then reformat your FAT32 disk as NTFS, and use cp -ra to
> copy the files back.
>
>>
>> I also found that the optimal cluster sizes of the two file systems
>> are different.  I can't seem to find any information as to whether
>> changing cluster sizes destroys the data in a partition or not.
>>
>
> Keyword: optimal.
>
> It doesn't really matter unless you're dealing with millions of really
> tiny files.  So unless you're in that situation, don't worry about it.
>
> -- 
> :wq
> _______________________________________________
> grlug mailing list
> grlug at grlug.org
> http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug
>
>