Hi,
I’m running WIN ME currently but it’s getting me ticked off with it’s constant freezing up. So I think it’s time to upgrade. Thing is, I’ve got two hard drives but reading FAT32 . If I purchase a external HDD to save all my info on, does it matter that the HDD is configured for NTFS?(Many external drives are preformatted for the buyer these days).
Or if I transfer all my info from the C/ drive to my other drive can I still read everything (files)that’re not program exclusive to WIN ME? I believe NTFS is backwards compatible, not 100% though. Can someone tell me what all is involved, I load OS’s on blank HDDs all the time; just not mine and not regarding a Master/slave set-up which I did not do myself.
ME can’t read or write from NTFS partitions without some sort of third-party utility. It’s not worth the effort; just reformat the external HDD as FAT32. If you want to convert to NTFS AFTER you install XP, XP will let you do that without losing any data.
What do you mean?
Not sure what you mean by “NTFS is backwards compatible”. The newer Windowses (2000 onwards) can use NTFS, but none of the older versions can without third-party programs.
Why don’t you just buy a new internal HDD and two external USB enclosures, remove both your current drives, install the new drive and put XP on it, put each old drive in a USB enclosure? Then copy off the data you want.