NTFS vs FAT16

[michael_in_atlanta]

New user here. I successfully created an image of my hard drive in a stand-alone hard drive that I'm using for backup media. The amount of data is about 16 MB - the backup disk is 40MB. There is no other data on the backup drive. True Image V8 apparently created two volumes, one a NTFS (I'm running XP Pro) the other a FAT16. Both appear to be about equal size (6 MB). Are these duplicates of each other? Should I delete the FAT16 image?
Thanks for any feedback.

[wdormann]

First, I'm going to assume you mean GB, not MB. Otherwise, you're dealing with miniscule amounts of data.

The drive that you're backing up... is it one partition or two?
FAT16 hasn't been common since Win95. From Win98 on, it's been FAT32. Where are you getting this information?

[michael_in_atlanta]

Thanks for the response. I did get my MB & GB confused. According to Explorer, my backup disk contains the following:

Disk 1 Flags Capacity Used Type
Fat16 (G:) Pri 39.19 MB 6.82 MB FS:Fat16 partition
NTFS (H:) Pri, Act 38.24 GB 12.64 GB NTFS

The drive I am backing up reads the following, in Acronis True Image:
NTFS (C:) Pri, Act 38.24 GB 12.69 GB NTFS
FAT16 Pri 39.19 MB 6.82 MB FS:Fat16 partition

While I was experimenting with the demo, when I brought up this screen, only the NTFS box was checked. I asked a question of Support on-line and received the reply I should check both boxes when doing a backup. Could that Fat 16 partition be something I created while I was tinkering with Acronis? I did make a full backup set on CDs before I registered the program and before I got the removable hard-drive which I am now using.

One other question: when I boot off the Acronis CD that I created, I get what appears to be a Safe Mode screen with no evident way of doing anything further. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks again.

[wdormann]

I would guess that the FAT16 partition was there before you tried TrueImage. Did you always have an H: drive?

As for the boot CD, what do you mean "Safe Mode screen?"
Are you saying that the boot process hangs? If so, try pressing F11 right when the CD starts booting, and remove "quiet" from the kernel options. You might get a better idea of where the hang is taking place, if that truly is the case.

[michael_in_atlanta]

Drive letters: A= floppy; B missed letter, C: hard drive D: CD-RW E: zipdisk F: external backup drive G & H: partition letters assigned by Acronis in F-drive image.

I got things to work, including booting off the CD (I had to change the boot order in the BIOS).

Now I have to figure out how to best handle backups to ensure that, even if a virus should corrupt my system, I have a complete set to reinstall. I expect the thing to do is create a separate, secure partition in my F drive and image to that - then use my curent partition for incremental backups. I would update the secure partition say, once a month, after scanning for virus contamination (I have McAfee running).

Unfortunately I have not kept my programs all in the c:\program files directory. Many of them reside in C:\. I think it will be a lot of work trying to move all of these to C:\program files - but it sure would be easier to have all of them in one place, and all my data files in MyDocuments.

Thanks again.