Can I reformat my external drive that is FAT32?

Question

1)I have windows XP, just added an external hard drive. Now I learn that my computer has NTFS, and the external hard drive is FAT32. I have already moved all my photos and music (over 7 g's worth) to the hard drive. Should I move it all back to my c: drive and reformat the external hard drive? Or is it too late? Or... is it not necessary?

2) Since adding the external hd and moving all these files, my computer speed has not increased that much - is something else I need to do on my computer??

Answer 1

You can...you would have to save everything to the orig hard drive and the reformat it to NTFS...NTFS is better at security and file structure...if you decide to...you can format it after you have backed up everything by going into control panel....administrative tools...disk management....right click the drive you want to format on the right and choose format...and go from there! I would suggest if your not plannng to use the drive on a computer running 98se or so to format he drive with NTFS!

Answer 2

NTFS is backward compatible. You do not need to format that drive. The amount of files that you moved does not improve the speed of the system. What does is, the amount of memory that is installed. The amount of programs that are running, even the ones that you do not know that are running. You can find out what ones are running by looking at the toolbar on the right bottom of your desktop. Also, hit CTL+ALT+DEL buttons all at the same time. click on processes. Do not end any unless you are absolutely sure what ones to end. You could have spyware and or adware that would bog your system down. Spyware Doctor is a good one to try. You could also try and go to the start menu, and then the run menu, then type msconfig. Select the start up tab, and uncheck any of the known programs that you do not want to start when windows starts. You do not need programs like microsoft word to start when windows starts, you will still be able to start it from the icon. Most programs are like this, exept for your audio, and how you connect to the internet, so if you experience problems after you uncheck some things, just redo it and check the ones back until you get the programs running that you must have.

Answer 3

You do not need to change your external hard drive to NTFS. Let it be FAT32. The speed of your computer depends on a lot of factors including but not limited to the hard disk space available. Some of the factors affecting the speed of your PC are, RAM(How much or how less you have), hard disk fragmentation, processor speed, presence of malware, viruses and spyware, Number of startup items, number of background programs running. Usually speed can be improved by doing the following:

1) Remove unnecessary programs starting up with windows.
2) get a good spyware detector/eliminator
3) get a good anti virus software, make sure it stays updated everyday and scan at least once a fortnight.
4) Run defragmentor on your C drive every month or so.
5) clean you junk files once in two weeks at least.
6) clean Internet cache and cookies.
7) Disable services that run on your computer and that you dont need.
8)Reformat C drive and install Windows XP again every 6 months.

Hope this helps

Answer 4

It would be an advantage to leave your external drive as FAT32 unless you absolutely have to change it. This way you can still use it on a windows 98/ME machine. A Win98/ME machine will not read NTFS partitions.

An NTFS partition on an external drive will NOT have better security unless you actually set the security parameters for that drive. It is not automatically enabled on any folder except for 'my documents' on the boot drive and a few others. Even then, NTFS security on an external drive is fairly meaningless since you can read the files unrestricted from a Linux machine (unless you set for files to be encrypted).

Be aware that if you do encrypt the files, not only will it make the drive a lot slower, but you will also have about zero chance of recovering them if your windows installation gets corrupted.

The speed increase from changing it to NTFS is unmeasurably small, although NTFS does offer slightly better data recovery in the event of a power loss.

Answer 5

You can re-format the external drive in the NTFS system which will allow you to store more on it as that is why they went to it. The Clusters are very small compared to the old FAT 32, and all it takes is one byte from a file to lap over into another cluster and that cluster is lost for storage except for that file. That won't increase your computer speed if it is slow at everything. Check your memory and see how busy your processor is by using Task Manager.

Ron

Answer 6

u can leave the 2nd drive fat32 or can covert it to ntsf .


1. First, back up your data. The conversion process almost always works flawlessly, but there is no point in taking the risk.
2. Click the button.
3. Click .
4. Enter "cmd" into the text field labeled "Open".
5. Click the button.
6. Enter the command "vol c:" to find the volume label for the C: partition. or the lettter of the drive you need to convert
7. Enter the command "convert c or the drive ltter you with to convert : /fs:ntfs" to convert the C: partition from FAT32 to NTFS.
8. When prompted, enter the volume label for the partition.

Answer 7

It's not necessary, but a good idea. NTFS has security features that FAT32 does not (encryption, ACL, etc). Since you moved over so much info, I would say it's time to defragment your c: drive. Right click on the c: drive in My computer, choose "properties", choose "tools", then defragement. It will speed up a little (a lot in some cases, depending on how badly fragmented it is).

Answer 8

FAT32 is backward compatible with older versions of Ms Windows so good idea to keep it that way. Increasing storage capacity has nothing to do with speed. If only a couple of gigs/megs left, your computer will start to freezing up more often but won't really slow it down. A combination of better processor and memory size will greatly improve speed.

Answer 9

Yes you need to shift all files from external drive to local drive.
And re format the external drive with NTFS, then copy the files to external drive again.

Answer 10

Standard Windows utility that is called CONVERT serves this purpose

Just go to the Command Prompt and execute the command:

C:\> CONVERT C: /fs:ntfs

Where C: is a name of the drive you want to convert.

After machine re-boot conversion process will start and you'll have your FAT32 converted to NTFS without of data loss