Clone disk w/ fat32 partitions to NTFS ?

I am trying to use True image 9.0 to clone one hard drive to another. The first hard drive has multiple fat32 partitions. I want these partitions on the second hard drive to be NTFS. Maybe I am missing a command option somewhere, but so far I cannot find how to specify that the partitions on the second (cloned) drive should be NTFS. Can I do this with TI 9 ? Thanks

 

It is not a function of TI9 to change a file system from FAT32 to NTFS when cloning a HDD. If that could be done it would no longer be a CLONE ie an exact copy of the source drive.
Within Windows there is a tool that enables this change to be made. You could apply this to your destination drive on it's own or you could run it on the source drive before cloning. This process is one way from FAT32 to NTFS. It is not reversible within Windows. To make any other kinds of file system changes you would need a third party disk management tool.

Xpilot

 

Do NOT use the Convert command to convert from FAT 32 to NTFS.
A better conversion is achieved by formatting the drive as NTFS and then restoring te FILES AND FOLDERS, not the drive, to the newly formatted NTFS drive.

I've seen reports that this cleaner way of converting from FAT 32 to NTFS can avoid problems.

For some drives, you will hgave to do the reformatting outside of windoze. For such drives, I booted with a Partition Magic CD, reformatted the drives, then rebooted with Ghost 10 and restored just the files. Should work as well with TI.

 

A web site that contains useful information in regards changing from Fat32 to NTFS.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm

You can also use a disk management programme that can convert the file system, unfortunately Acronis Disk Director doesn’t have this facility.

John.

 

To avoid all problems, the ONLY method to use is to format the drive as NTFS and then restore the files.

 

How can the OP do this following or as part of a Clone operation since this was his original question?
My original suggestion will work just fine on a Windows XP or 2000 system. I was perhaps at fault in not asking the the OP if an earlier version was in fact being used.
What you are putting forward as the ONLY problem free method would work provided that the OP is geared up to do imaging and thus can avoid the cloning operation which would of course overwrite your proposed NTFS formatting.

Xpilot

 

The method I described has nothing to do with imaging.

Once a drive is formatted as NTFS, you then MUST restore the files and directories, not a drive image, using whatever backup program you wish that provides the capability of booting from a recovery CD and restoring files and directories.

 

I agree that Howard Kaikow's approach is the best one in terms of ending up with a pure NTFS disk.

I am not aware of any problems with Convert other than:

The MFT may not be contiguous although this may (not can) be minimized by defragging the disk first and having a lot of free space on it.

Convert will write 512 byte clusters whereas XP performs best when it can align files on 4096 byte boundaries.

I did a Convert on my system and and it worked fine. I also later ran Partition Magic to change the clusters to 4096 bytes. I did not notice any change in performance but I can't recall if changing the clusters to 4096 also realigned any misaligned files.

 

The MFT can be dferagged by using a good defragger, e.g., Perfect Disk.
Cluster changes can indeed be made using programs such as Partition Magic.

But most users do not have Perfect Disk and/or Partition Magic, or equivalent programs.

In addition, I do recall seeing something (at that famous unknown source that I cannot recall) that stated that when Convert is used, the ACL for files may not be set up as well as if doing a fresh NTFS restore, and this may cause a problem with some programs. Do not recall the source or details, but why take the chance?