converting NTFS to fat32

[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

[voidmain]

Where is a great fdisk program?  Did you forget to mention something?

[lu666s]

Wondering, why would anyone use NTFS or FAT32 when there is such a great journaling FS: ReiserFS.

What, if one can run windoze on it? And you fell from a cherry tree on your head?    

I am talkin' a real OS now...          

[dbl221]

Wow I am an idiot.......The fdisk is at

http://www.toms.net/rb/

Sorry

Also I found this tool to read NTFS from FAT called ntfsdos

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml

Sorry about that

[silentraver]

dbl221 good point indeed, void you to.
Luckyily i have the brains i do, heres what i did in pretty much the same manner.

i got partitiion magic 7.0 wich by the way DOES let you convert from NTFS to Fat32! problem is i got some error message in dos while running it, only my fault.

so anyway, i went to dos, with partition magic, created a new partition in dos a fat32 one of course, a size of 500 megabytes, (by the time i got done installing millenium i only had 13 megs left!! wow a few more megs and i would of had to restart and reinstall again!)
then i made sure the partition is not hidden from dos, booted up windows xp, dragged and dropped my my windows millenium file in the unhidden partition. rebooted to the dos partition magic program, made the new partition active and restarted. at first certain key characters was wrong! but i guess its something with the ntfs file format. but anyways, i went to the directory it was in, and ran the setup, and bingo! it ran, hell yesssss baby!! then i deleted the old partition after booting up in millineum, and before i only had like 2 gigs of space, after i got rid of it  freed up like 6 gigs or so back! wow,either i had alot of junk files, or xp just takes all da mem, probably that. but now i got 9 gigs of mem, where my harddrive only holds 10!
im happy. thanks all for helping me out, if i was a few hours or so not figuring this out, that advice would of worked, and i would of love you guys, still do though for saying the exact thing i did. peace

[freeflyfreak]

I just went through this same issue myself. Under WindowsXP.....go to my computer right click on d: partition and select format. Change the file format from NTFS to FAT32.  Then use partition magic and merge the c & d partition.  You will get no error problems doing it this way.

But whenI tried changing the file format with partition...I would simply get error messages.