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by wesley.chin

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Say I have an external hard drive and it is formatted as NFTS. The external hard drive is attached to a WinME computer. I know that the computer won't able to access the drive cause the machine is FAT32. Short of attaching the external hard drive to a NFTS machine, is there a way to make it work with the WinME machine?

Thanks

17 replies

by older mycroft

Have you connected this NTFS hard drive to the WinME machine?

Or is this just a hypothetical discussion?

by wesley.chin

I did a typo. NTFS is correct.

This has actually occurred before and in the end the external hard drive had to be attached to a NTFS machine. But I'd like to know how to make it work with the FAT32 machine, short of reformatting the FAT32 machine to NTFS.

This time I had a NFTS machine, but I'd like to know what could be done if all I had were FAT32 machines.

Thanks

by older mycroft

I've got a Tower and a Laptop both networked together both running XP: the tower has two HDDs formatted to NTFS, the laptop has two HDDs formatted to FAT32.

The thing is both machines can read [b]each other[/b] so I don't see your problem.

If you format the HDD to FAT32 then both ME and XP will be able to run with it.

by cookieorc

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881
Check here for converting your File system to NTFS. Are you sure that ME can actually support the external drive.

I do not know if it just my opinion, but that is the worst operating system known to man. I would rather go back to windows 98...

by wesley.chin

The external hard drive had been connected to a NTFS machine. But it had died so it was moved to the FAT32 machine at that time.

Yeah I know...most of the machines here are XP, except 2 ME ones.

by cookieorc

If you do not feel like readin that article just type
convert /?
at the command promt...

by wesley.chin

I am looking for what to do if the situation ever came up that all I had were NFTS machines...

by older mycroft

I suggest you try a little harder to get rid of it, it you expect to be taken seriously on Tech Forums such as TR and others.

by kjell_andorsen

Windows ME will not support NTFS at all so converting the main drive on the ME machine will...ehr...not work.

The only solution I can see here would be to hook the external drive up to a machine that runs an OS that supports NTFS (XP, 2k, 2k3 or even NT4 with SP5. You could install this on the ME machine as a dual-boot option I suppose, but it might be more trouble than it's worth.

by kjell_andorsen

He is wanting to know if there is any way his Windows ME machine can access the NTFS external drive he has hooked up to it. I will go out on a limb and assume the NTFS drive has data on it that he needs access to.

The issue here is simply that Windows ME (Or any Win 9X OS for that matter) will not support NTFS. He can't convert the FAT32 HDD on his Windows ME to NTFS without also upgrading the OS to either NT4 with SP5, Win 2k, XP or 2K3.

He theoretically CAN install one of those OS choices on the existing Windows ME machine and run it in a dual-boot situation, because Those OS's can read both FAT32 and NTFS, but he can't get ME to read NTFS and he can't convert the external drive back to FAT32 without losing all his data.

Now just out of curiosity are you always this rude?

by cris-p-critter

Thank you for saying what many might be thinking....I have been on the receiving end of Old Mycroft's rudeness, and it isn't plesant.

by ---tk---

To test out your question.... Take your drive to an XP machine, plug it in, pull all the data off, right click it, format it as fat32. Safely remove the drive and plug it in to the Me machine. if it works it works, if it doesn't check out the manufacturer's web site for a driver... from there, if ME sees it, then you can go from XP to ME and vice versa...

Personally I agree with the others ME is really unstable! I don't know I think MS bob was pretty bad.... lol... Shame on Bill for listening to his wife... LOL... couldn't resist... But actually Bob was inter graded to the office Suite. That stupid pop up paper clip, you can actually change it to bob, but I dont remember off hand how to do it... :) (fan of useless information)

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