Convert fat 32 to NTFS UPDATE

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tiler65

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Hello all

Just bought my first external HD

it is a My Book WD 1 TB USB 2.0 drive.

When attempting to back up my folders and stuff I get an error message that it is not possible to archive larger files than 4GB on a Fat 32 drive.


Why not is my first question.

And my second is how do I change to a NTFS drive without losing my temper and all my files.

Please help in good old english please as I am very insecure about computers and what effect they have on my health/stress.
 
Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
At the command prompt, type the following, where drive letter is the drive that you want to convert:
convert drive letter: /fs:ntfs
For example, type the following command to convert drive E to NTFS:
convert e: /fs:ntfs
Note If the operating system is on the drive that you are converting, you will be prompted to schedule the task when you restart the computer because the conversion cannot be completed while the operating system is running. When you are prompted, click YES.
When you receive the following message at the command prompt, type the volume label of the drive that you are converting, and then press ENTER:
The type of the file system is FAT.
Enter the current volume label for drive drive letter
When the conversion to NTFS is complete, you receive the following message at the command prompt:
Conversion complete
 
Why you ask... because when they were designing it they did not think files 4gb in size would be used.

If it was me, i would take everything off the drive then format it to NTFS then move everything.

Although you can convert without formatting i would never do it, and no people who have lost everything because of it.
 
tried that and I get an error message

convert: unable to open image 'J' : permission denied @ blob.c/openblob/2489.
convert: missing an image filename '/fs:ntfs' @ convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/2772

Any Help please.
 
Do I just format via the normal format option then?
 
Others on here might know better than me as i am no Linux guru but...

You dont want NTFS, you want ext2 or ext3 as they are linux file systems and NTFS is Microsoft.

The downside is i cant see a way of moving from Fat32 to EXT3 without formating the drive. If the Mybook is setup with partitions then you could just remove all the data from the data partition and then reformat it with ext3.

To format the partition you need to use fdisk to setup the partition and then mke2fs to format it as EXT3. If you are not familiar with Linux i wouldnt start going down this route as there is a chance you could hose the box.
 
eeverson said:
Others on here might know better than me as i am no Linux guru but...

You dont want NTFS, you want ext2 or ext3 as they are linux file systems and NTFS is Microsoft.

The downside is i cant see a way of moving from Fat32 to EXT3 without formating the drive. If the Mybook is setup with partitions then you could just remove all the data from the data partition and then reformat it with ext3.

To format the partition you need to use fdisk to setup the partition and then mke2fs to format it as EXT3. If you are not familiar with Linux i wouldnt start going down this route as there is a chance you could hose the box.
Click to expand...


Where has Linux come into the equation, I run Win XP Pro,

See how my head hurts when people do not read things properly or try and over complicate matters.

Thanks for trying to help.
 
Tried to do the cmd promt old way of formatting and it is asking if I want to dismount the drive.

Should I do this?

Thanks for your patience.
 
If it's a new drive then you won't lose any files when you convert to NTFS (as you've got none on there to begin with ;) )

Open 'My Computer' (or 'Computer' in Win 7), right click on your WD external drive, click on 'format', change the file system to NTFS, tick the 'Quick Format' check box (tis fine as it's a new drive so you dont need to do a deep format), and click 'Start'. Now wait.

Forget anyone said anything about linux :)
 
I am dismounting................................................
 
good lord what an odd lot of information lol

the covert command should work, im guessing youre not logged in as an admin account?

never once have i had a covert command lose data on a disk (and ive done it easily 100 times).

dismounting is fine, it just means its suspending read/writes to the disk while it does the operation (in laymans terms).
 
neil_g said:
good lord what an odd lot of information lol

the covert command should work, im guessing youre not logged in as an admin account?

never once have i had a covert command lose data on a disk (and ive done it easily 100 times).

dismounting is fine, it just means its suspending read/writes to the disk while it does the operation (in laymans terms).
Click to expand...

Thanks Neil.

I was logged in as admin but it said that the drive was being used by another party (?)

Anyway I dismounted and it did convert very easily.

Thanks for the input.

Now which free back up software should I use....................
 
first post is a link to some software? call me synical..

anyways, FAT32 is old youve got the file size limit to etc.. its not journalled like NTFS or HFS+, id recommend going either of those and if youre running windows and osx buy the cheap app to write to NTFS on osx or the app to write to HFS+ on windows.
 
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