Here’s the question. Can the first partition on a drive be NTFS with the rest of the HDD as a Logical Drive in the Extended partition?
Backstory:
I had to fix a computer that had FAT32. The client said that the HDD was dead, but once I had everything put back together, it booted into WinME (yuck) fine. The client wanted Win2k on it so I whipped out Partition Magic (the old solera DOS version, of course). I resized the only partition to about 1/2 the full drive space, and moved it to the end of the drive, converted it to a logical drive, and created a new primary partition with all the unused space (PMagic created an extended partition automatically). Hit the ‘go’ button and waited for the 9 hrs it took to complete it. I installed Win2k on the new primary partition leaving the file system intact.
I am now considering using PMagic (or Win2k) to convert the primary partition to NTFS. Will this effect the other partition at all? Should I convert the other partition to NTFS? How will this effect the way the WinME boot operates?
I have never had a good experience with NTFS, every NTFS partition I have ever used has switched to the Dark Side of the Force (corrupted), but I’m thinking of becomming a convert. Should I switch to NTFS?
Ack, I’ve realized that my OP is a little confusing. Here’s the questions:
-Can the first partition on a drive be NTFS with the rest of the HDD as a Logical Drive in the Extended partition?
-I am now considering using PMagic (or Win2k) to convert the primary partition to NTFS. Will this effect the other partition at all?
-Should I convert the other partition to NTFS?
-How will this effect the way the WinME boot operates?
-Should I switch to NTFS or stay with FAT32?
I have my first partition right now as NTFS, with a couple more FAT32 partitions sitting inside an extended partition, and it all works.
Really, though, unless you need the compression/encryption/user management stuff that comes along with NTFS, you’re better off just sticking with FAT32.
Oh, and Windows ME can’t read NTFS. At all. So if you want to keep that, then you shouldn’t convert.
Converting one partition to NTFS won’t affect the WinME drive at all. However ME won’t be able to read the NTFS drive once its converted.
Your machine should boot first to W2K, from which your given the menu to choose which OS, so it won’t affect ME booting at all. But don’t sue me if this is not true (You can verify this by looking at a file on the W2K partition called boot.ini in the root of the partition, its marked read only, system and hidden, so you’ll have to change the default explorer view setting to even see it. It should just list the OSes on the computer and where they are to be found. {A word you the wise: don’t mess with it! btw. It can be v. nasty to fix})
And the extra security that NTFS gives you only really coms into its own when you choose NTFS as the drive type during setup. If you convert the drive now, then all the OS files will have default ‘Everyone, full control’ permissions, which doesn’t give you the (admittedly small) protection that NTFS gives you if someone tries to hack your box.
And its slower than FAT? I didn’t think it was. By how much?
As k2dave says, why do you want to go NTFS. There are some apps which require it, but they’re usually server applications.
One final note - from the disclaimer that convert.exe used to give on NT4 IIRC - have a full backup before you do it. Better safe than sorry.
I was just told that the second partition is trashable, I’m just going to format it and PMagic it into the first partition…IF I can find my PMagic disks. They’ve wandered off somewhere.
Actually I think there are some 3rd-party shareware packages that will let Windows 98/ME/etc access NTFS partitions (definitely read them, possibly write to them as well).
Me, I’d like to see a Macintosh extension and/or OS X app/plist that would mount NTFS volumes on a Mac.