Conversion from NTFS to FAT32

I am afraid not.

You need a commercial software, like Partition Magic.

Microsoft does not support going back to FAT32 from NTFS.

There is no Windows command or Microsoft utility to convert a NTFS volume to a FAT32 volume, short of deleting the NTFS partition and starting over.
NOTE: ALL data on the drive would be lost if you did this!!!

Your only option is a 3rd party utility such as Partition Magic.

Now, why do you want to switch to FAT32?
FAT32 is less secure and does not have the built-in data protection that NTFS does.

If you need to access files on the drive from a DOS boot, you can get 3rd party utilities that allow DOS to read a NTFS disk.
One source is www.systeminternals.com

Chas

Only way to convert NTFS to FAT32 is backup
the existing data & reformat.
Microsoft windows doesn't support switching from
NTFS to FAT32.

it cannot be done, once you have converted to ntfs there is no way back.
(unless of course you reformat your drive!!!)

Sorry, You have to backup all of your data and then dump everything and reformat your drive using your OS install CD on boot-up and choose the New Install feature and go to the new-partition/format choice for the hard drive. (Win2000 & also WinXP)

This would be the safest way to convert back to FAT32 from NTFS. Using third party software can lead to some hidden problems that don't show up until you try to make any other partition changes to the drive while still keeping a pre-existing FAT partition that was previously created by the third party program.

However, generally speaking, I wouldn't run NT(based) operating system on a FAT based partition because you lose all of that data protection built in (Win2000 or WinXP are the only OS's that can be configured to run on FAT32 as well as NTFS). FAT(16) and FAT32 are really vulnerable to data corruption caused by disk errors and other software errors that may occur. Also with NTFS you have ownership/security protection of your file/data, especially if you configure your system with a User login at run time instead of logging in as the Administrator. Unfortunately many users of the NT OS' don't realize the weakness of always logging on into the administrator account. This gives everything that exists in the system to operate freely, especially many worms and viruses gain very open access this way.

NT was originally created to make it very hard for hackers/worms/viruses/spybots and the like to gain control of the system and its configuration. (Windows NT 3.51 was given a government security rating of C2 in its hayday, the highest that was ever given to an OS of any kind.)

The "PC" SOFTWARE DOCTOR

you cannot convert ntfs to fat32. you need to reformat your hard disk so you can go back to fat32. the best thing to do is backup all your files to another hard disk. partition your hardisk into two or three volumes and install win98 on the first partition, and winXP pro or win2k (depends on the operating system of your choice) on the second and use the last partitions for your data. i,ve said this so that you can use
both the ntfs and fat32 file systems...

Partition Magic 8.0

Just checked it guys. It will do it.

Lee

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