backup fat32 or transfer first?

Hi, I got an Acer aspire t620 desktop in front of me here, and the HDD has winxp home sp2, and its formatted FAT32(any idea why they would do this?).
ok so i want to image the drive with ATI8, then partition the hdd, but i dont want to leave it fat32, so what would be the best way to go about doing this?


thanks.

 

I would make a backup first before converting that way you can restore and try again if something goes wrong.

You should be able to convert the drive to NTFS using the convert program in XP. See this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881/en-us

 

I agree with MudCrab, but would like to point out that restoring the image created while the system partition was FAT32 would also bring the latter back. So, for later use, you need to create a new image after the conversion to NTFS has been successful.

 

thanks.
Then i'll create image, convert to ntfs, then create another image just to be sure.
So there's nothing in ATI that will do the same thing, only the inbuilt one in xp?

 

Correct, you need to use the NT command.

F.

 

sorry, can you elaborate
which bit is correct, and the NT command?

 

iHz,

I think foghorne is refering to the fact that you can't use True Image to convert a Fat32 partition to NTFS. As far as I could find out, Disk Director doesn't even do this.

If you need more detailed info on the "convert" command in XP you can click on the start button, click on help & support, type convert into the search box and click the green arrow. Two entries should come up under the Suggested Topics section.

 

yeah, i already read the link you provided earlier mudcrab, and i have no problems with that, i just thought foghorne might have been referring to a different method thats all. No problems, i'll just do it the normal way then.

thanks again.

 

Sorry for not being clearer. Convert is a Windows NT command. This is the conventional way of converting to NTFS.

F.

 

all done, worked without a problem, thanks again to all for the help.