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converting NTFS to fat32

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silentraver:
anyone have any ideas how to do this? im working on it with partition magic, keep getting errors.
Simple enough, i want to uninstall windows xp, and go back to windows millenium. on the other side to, im trying to find the simplest linux to install with not to big of a file to download, i have dsl , but must conserve some diskspace.

voidmain:
I've never seen a utility that would allow you to convert NTFS to FAT/FAT32, you claim the new Partition magic is supposed to be able to do it?  The older ones could not.  The filesystems are too different to make this an easy task so the best bet is to back up your data, reformat, install, restore...

dbl221:
Yep that same question comes up in NT Lab every so often .... the answer from every professor and geek in every lab is always NOPE...CANT BE DONE.

Create a fat32 partition in addition to your NTFS one. Install Win2K...it is happy with any Windows file-system.

Now copy any important files to the fat32 partition...delete the NTFS partion

voidmain:
Hey, good idea.  And since it sounds like they already have XP installed presumably on a partition consuming the entire disk how about this:

1) Use Partition Magic to shrink the C: NTFS partition down as small as possible, then create the FAT32 D: partition on the remaining space.
2) Boot XP, copy all important data to D:
3) Use Parition Magic to blow away the NTFS partition and resize the FAT32 partition to take up the entire disk (well, leave some room for a future Linux install)
4) Install the virus trap known as ME on the new FAT32 partition

dbl221:
Hey that would work....good one.

By the way here is a great fdisk program for Linux...its actually an entire distro on a floppy.

Just make sure to format the floppy like so:

fdformat /dev/fd0u1722

cuz its to big for the 1.44 format.

Good Luck

dbl221****Comp-Sys walking wounded

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