How to Convert FAT to NTFS Without Losing Data

[Jigar]

NTFS And FAT32

It are filetypes for your harddisk. For windows 98se and before, is the filetype for your harddisk fat32 or fat16.
Nfts is the standard for windows XP. People say that nfts is faster then fat32, i can imagine that
Espessially when defragmenting, fat32 is way slower.

When having windows 98se on your pc. Or when you buy a external harddrive, the standard is fat32. Annoying.

Problem

Let's say you have fat32. You want to unrar a large file (> 2 gig) and windows tells you you cannot unpack
because you have to less harddrive space... How is that possible when having enough space??? Because windows
is too lauzy to tell you, that fat 32 does not support large files on it.

So operating on a fat32 system, you cannot have large files > 2 gig or >4 gig on it. That is a problem
when having a 4 gig iso file of a movie. so it would be interesting to upgrade.


Solution

You don't need a program to install to change the filetype from fat32 to nfts.

1. Press start on your left.
2. Press on run...
3. Type in 'cmd' without the ', press OK
4. Like the picture above, go to your c:/ folder, by typing in cd.. and again, just as long till you have reached C:/
5. Go to your computer, and see what kind of letter stands in from of the drive you want to convert.
6. press in 'CONVERT X: /FS:NTFS' without the '. The X is for the letter your system drive, or external drive name. (see point 5)
7. on the question 'convert lost chains top files Y/N?' press a 'y' and continue
8. cmd will now check file system and the rest. If your cmd finishes, your file system is converted to NFTS. You can close down cmd. (if you want to check if it really did finished, go to your computer and single click on the drive to see what kind of file system it has)
9. If cmd says: 'X: was not converted to NFTS, the conversion failed etc, you must follow the next steps
10. As you can see above, my cmd failed the first time. Next solution.
11. Type in 'chkdsk X: /f', where X is the letter of your drive. Wait a while to finish.
12. Follow the question 'convert lost chains top files Y/N?' press a 'y' and continue
13. Wait a while to finish (would take 15 minutes i thought)
14. After this, cmd will say that converting was succesfull. Check it by going to your computer, and single click on the drive to see what kind of file system your drive has

[Bhairav]

Hey Jigar thanks for the guide it really seems to be helpful!

[anmolbd]

Thanks Man nice one ..keep it up.........