I work in a tiny office (4 employees, 3 PCS, 1 laptop) where demands for my IT services are relatively minor and infrequent. This allows me to concentrate on my primary job as an AutoCAD operator but frequent crashes, esp. when running ACAD and WordPerfect, have prompted the Owner/Boss to consider upgrading from W98SE to W2K.
I’m all for it and have done my homework to ensure all of our hardware/softare is supported but I’m confused about file systems. Just how (in)compatible is NTFS with FAT32? A secondary drive (FAT32) on 1 of the PCs is a file server containing >15 gigs of data. Can/should this remain FAT32 or be converted to NTFS? How safe is the conversion and is there an undo? Finally, what are the advantages/disadvantages of NTFS vs. FAT32?
NTFS and FAT32 aren’t incompatible with each other, as they don’t interact. They’re just different systems of organising files on disk. NTFS is (according to microsoft) more efficient and reliable. NTFS also allows for wonderfully confusing things called ACLs which give you the ability to decide exactly who gets to see which file. NTFS is generally more secure than FAT, and the system/boot partition of any NT/W2K machine REALLY should be NTFS, otherwise you’re most likely leaving your system wide open. Security mightn’t be a major concern for an office with 4 people, but better safe than sorry.
To answer your questions:
I’d do the W2K upgrade without doing the NTFS conversion for the data drive. Why add to the things that can go wrong? You can always do it later by running convert.exe <Driveletter:>
How safe is the conversion? I’ve done a few, and I’ve never seen it fail. Check the disk for consistency first though. There’s no real straightforward undo, there might be a commercial tool, but I doubt it.
One BIG disadvantage of NTFS is that its difficult to access if your computer won’t boot. You can’t just bang in a DOS floppy and trawl through your files.
On a related note: do a full backup before even thinking of upgrading. (You were going to do that anyway, right? ;))
In general the advantage of NTFS is the security. If you aren’t worried about the security on the secondary drive, NT will read fat32 just fine.
In fact, you can install NT on a fat32 drive, though, again, you wouldn’t get the security. I’m not sure about conversion. You can reformat, of course, but I’ve never converted an existing drive to NTFS without losing data, though I believe it can be done.
Wow! Thanks for the fast replies. I think I’ll definitely leave the data drive alone and upgrade the boot partitions. However, this concerns me:
I’d heard that you can’t just make a boot floppy in W2K, so what would be my options for recovery if the above happens (god forbid)? This leads me to another question: If I were to install W2K onto a FAT32 boot partition could I convert it to NTFS in the future?
Re: Backups
We’re obsessive about backups around here, esp. since the Great Hard Drive Crash of '97. Our problem nowadays is cataloging all of our backups.
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You’ve converted to NTFS and lost data? Do you mind if I ask in what circumstances? Convert is one of the very few microsoft tools that I’ve seen work first time every time.
Hodge, sorry, the actual syntax is ‘convert x: /FS:NTFS’. W2K is admittedly a lot more forgiving than NT for unbootable systems: safe mode and the recovery console (make sure you install the recovery console, it’ll also run from the CD, but its nice to have ready just in case!) are good.
Make sure you create a repair disk, and make sure you update it regularly: your backup software should be able to make one for you or schedule a file to run to do it for you. An example you can work with is here:
I’ve also heard that upgrading to windows 2000 doesn’t set the permissions securely on your system/boot partition. (The recommended procedure where I work is clean install, they seem to think we’ve nothing better to do).
I do know for certain that converting the system/boot partition to NTFS AFTER the upgrade definitely won’t set permissions correctly, so I’d at least convert that one.
PS. Nice to know I’m not the only person obsessive about backups! (Since the great email/database/what-have-you server crashes of 97, 98 ,99, etc)
Hodge, yep, you can convert later, after the upgrade, using convert.exe (as advised above) or Partition Magic (as astro mentioned).
Pros of NTFS:
Security (as mentioned) Journalling (Changes to file information is written as a transaction. If a crash or error occurs, the whole transaction is rolled back, so that the disk in never in an imcomplete state. Note that this does not occur for data - only file allocation entries in the Master File Table, the equivalent of the File Allocation Table on FAT32 drives). Performance, particularly for large drives like your 15 Gb.
Cons:
The disk can’t be mounted by other operating systems, such as Linux and Windows9x. Network shares can be, though. (There are read-only Linux drivers for NTFS, but they’re not that reliable yet).
The fact that you have a separate boot partition is A Good Thing. Win2K is a much better server operating system than Win9x, and (IMHO) Linux/Unix/BSD is a much better server operating system than Win2K. If you don’t know these operating systems (in the old days, 6 or 7 years ago, CAD seemed to run only on Unix), then you probably don’t want to learn them now, when you’re in a hurry to get things working better. It’s a good fun offline project, though!
Thanks again for the replies everybody. Since security isn’t our main concern due to our small staff and mountain of data backups, I’m going to forgo the conversion to NTFS for the time being and install W2K on a FAT32 partition. Stability is our primary focus so I guess taking it one step at a time is prudent.
astro, thanks for reminding me of Partition Magic. We have a copy that I used to partition our hard drives in the first place and I’d completely forgotten about it.
Marcus, I’ve actually been fooling around w/ Linux on and off for about 8 months now in my spare time. It’s been fascinating but certainly not an option at the office. Heck, I repeatedly have to teach the Bossman how to use his email program.
Although it’s not a problem that occurs much outside of video editing, FAT32 has a 2 GB file size limit, while NTFS supposedly has no such thing. Just an aside.