File System Conversion in Windows XP Operating System

It is well known that due to historical reasons, the file system of the hard disk has been changed many times, including: FAT, FAT32, NTFS. From the current point of view, the file system recommended by Microsoft is NTFS. Mainly used for NT systems and newly released windows xp.

  As for FAT, FAT32, NTFS file system is better or worse, this is not the scope of this article, you can refer to the relevant information, here only how to implement the method of NTFS system.

  What kind of file system does the new machine become, depending on which method is used to partition and format the hard disk? Therefore, this situation is easy to handle, as long as you choose NTFS system in the operation, everything will be fine. But in reality, many machines "historically" installed the early operating system, did not use the NTFS system, and now how to do it to transition to the NTFS system?

  There are two more feasible methods, respectively, for different situations:

  1. In the process of installing windows xp, the conversion. This method is suitable for the original system not NTFS, but the hard disk has a large available space. During installation, select NTFS system, install windows xp, install does not format the original file partition, and does not destroy the original file. The specific operation is:

  a, the installer first checks the existing file system, if it is already NTFS, do not do any conversion.

  b, if not NTFS system, the system will be converted, will prompt you to retain existing files before conversion? You have to answer it. Only then can proceed to the next step.

  2. If you have not converted in the installation of windows xp, you can also use the file system conversion tool in windows xp. You may remember that in the original windows, there is a tool to convert FAT to FAT32. Now in Windows XP, there is a similar conversion tool, the program name: Convert.exe. Can only be used after the installation of windows xp is completed. The difference is that this conversion tool in windows xp is a command line interface. The specific usage is as follows:

  a, in the already installed windows xp, click Star-> Run, enter cmd in the edit box of the dialog box, then press Enter, you can open similar The command console like win2000, this is, it shows a command line window similar to dos.

  b, after the prompt cursor, enter: help convert, then press Enter, will display the help information of the convert program. I also used the help convert command in Windows 2000 Professional, which has the same effect and converts FAT to NTFS.

  c, typical use: convert drive_letter: /fs: ntfs,

  here: convert is a command program, can not be saved;

drive_letter : is the logical partition to be converted, such as D:, E:, etc.;

 /fs:ntfs is specified to be converted to NTFS file system.

  If you type: convert D: /fs: ntfs, then, is to convert the D: disk to NTFS file system.

  Using the command line program, you can also open a command prompt window in the attachment, and then execute the command line program.

  It should be noted that this conversion is irreversible. That is, a logical partition that has been converted to an NTFS file system can no longer be converted to FAT or FAT32 using the tool.