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I have just got a 160GB USB hard drive that works great on my XP home computer, but I formated it to NTFS that is only reconised by XP.
I have also got a ME computer but this will not reconise the hard drive as it needs to be FAT32.
Now this is not the end of the world for me but is there an easy way to change it back to FAT32, and if so can you make it as easy to follow as possible.
Are there any advantages to it being NTFS formated?
Thanks for any help, Reg
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think you can... short of reformatting it.
Hi,
Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Director will do this for you.
There are freeware & shareware utilities as well
This is a new one I saw this week
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/index.html
Back up your data before using any partition management software.
The only advantage to keeping the drive FAT 32 is that Win ME and 98 systems would be able to read the drive.
hth
Ceri
Hey that's good to know .... all I ever used was the converter, and it was fat32 to ntfs and it said specifically it couldn't be undone :)
HI,
The newest versions of Partition Magic could convert FAT32 to NTFS to FAT32
As I recall versions before PM 8 could convert from FAT 32 to NTFS but not back
hth
Ceri
Thanks for all your help.
I think i will keep it as it is for now as i should start to fase out the old ME computer.
I used to have the two computers networked and used a shared file, would this help in swopping files.
Reg
Yes it certainly would. Networking doesn't care what filesystem is used.
ntfs has better security as well as storing files much smaller than with fat32. Ntfs also can assign security at the file level rather than just securing with a password as with fat32.