Windows XP and conversion to NTFS

chewbonkay wrote on 7/24/2002, 7:20 AM
I've been trying to read up on the XP vs. Windows 2K issue before posting to this forum but I do need to ask for a little advice. I am building a new machine and based on what people on this forum are saying I am going to go with Windows XP (Standard PC?) as my OS. First, is this true - XP? Any advice here would be priceless.

I am doing this for speed (going from a P3 700 to a P4 1.8) but mostly for NTFS. I am on Win98SE and everything works great except I have issues (see former posts) when printing to tape where the Vegas created 4.0 GB files join - misc. frames appear.

So, my next question is has anyone had success converting a FAT32 drive to NTFS while in the middle of a vegas project? Should I wait until I can reformat or can I convert mid stream and trust that my current project will still be usable. Any thoughts? Thank you.

Mike

Comments

inspector wrote on 7/24/2002, 8:05 AM
To convert to NTFS the command is "convert drive_letter: /fs:" with no quotes. It can be executed from the "start-run". Shouldn't be any data problems. If you are concerned about projects you could burn them to cd or save to anoth3er drive.

I have read that using a boot partition with FAT32 is easier to recover from system problems. I would suggest two partitions on your primary hard drive. One partition "FAT32" for boot, system files, and other software and a second partition "NTFS" for data.

If you are doing a clean install of XP, I suggest creating a partition "fat32" during install and leave the free space alone until XP is installed. You can create and format the free space from inside Windows. Start-Run-"format (drive letter) /A:64" with no quotes. This will give you 64K blocks which is desireable.

There may be other things to consider which I am sure other may comment on but this is how to do the technical part. NTFS may get you past some size limits of files. A friend recorded 13 hours (~53GB) of the Sci-Fi channel and was able to open it in Vegas and successfully edit the file. It was very slow to save changes but the edits were successful none the less.

I hope this helps.

Steve (Inspector Gadget)
inspector wrote on 7/24/2002, 8:09 AM
"To convert to NTFS the command is "convert drive_letter: /fs:" with no quotes."

convert drive_letter: /fs: should read "convert drive_letter: /fs:NTFS"


steve
BillyBoy wrote on 7/24/2002, 10:34 AM
To answer the question more directly, yes I did convert during the middle of several Vegas projects with no problem. Remember that NTFS and FAT32 are just different types of file systems. By switching you're changing the file cabinet so to speak not the files in the cabinet. To be extra safe I would make backup copies of your project files (not the source files) and any other critical files you have. Like with any on-the-fly file system conversion the risk is corrupting files during the switch. That can happen, but rare. Like for example you suffer a system problem or worse a power outage during the conversion.

I have all my partitions including the boot partition as NTFS. Its a much better file system than FAT32 and if recovery is ever needed the process is SIMPLER and more sure than FAT32 systems. In fact NTFS unlike FAT32 can repair itself.
inspector wrote on 7/25/2002, 8:59 AM
BillyBoy,

About which file system to use, there is some truth to both our posts. See the technet article below. See the sections on "Fault Tolerance" and "The System Partition" in particular.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

respectfully,

Steve