"Best" way to convert to NTFS

I've already converted 9 of my 10 logical drives to NTFS.

For some drives, I was able to copy the files elsewhere, format the drive, and then copy the files back. This results in the most efficient NTFS drive.

However, for 5 drives, I had to do the conversion at boot time.

I was thinking that there's gotta be a better way.
For example, will either of the following work?

1. If Retrospect offers the capability of formatting drives during disaster recovery, I could reformat and restore all drives using Retrospect's disaster recovery CD.

2. If the Symantec Recovery Disk in Ghost 10 offers the capability of formatting drives, I could reformat and restore all FILES (not drives) via Ghost 10.

Alternatives?

 

Hello,
Why couldn't you format them in windows?
Do you use raid or maybe have page files on these drives?
Mrk

 

powerquest partition magic (norton partition magic) will change the partition to NTSF or back to fat32 in real time with no loss of data. I have tried several different ways but partition magic is by far the best.

 

To convert a volume to NTFS from the command prompt

1-Start> All Programs>Accessories> click cmd
2-In the command prompt window, type: convert C: /fs:ntfs >hit enter
where C is the drive letter. You can convert FAT or FAT32 volumes to NTFS with this command.

 

I guess I was not clear.

Using the built-in converter results in a less efficient NTFS volume, and can slow execution.

I'm looking for the most effective way to reformat each drive and restore the files on freshly formatted drives.

 

I was thinking of doing the following.

The system is multiboot, with Retrospect installed on only the main OS.
For this problem, I may do better using, say, Ghost 10.

So, if I install Ghost on a lesser OS, say on drive F, I may be able to reformat the other drives and restore from the Ghost image.

Then reboot to the main OS, format drive F and restore the files to F either from the Retrospect or Ghost backup.

The gotchya in this is that each OS is tied to other drives that cannot be converted online. In one case, I believe it's because there's a pagefile on a drive, so I could remove that pagefile, reformat the drive, restore the files, then restore the pagefile.

 

I found a "solution".
Boot with Partition Magic rescue disks, format the drives, then boot with Ghost's CD and recover the files for each drive.

Recovering files is very slow with Ghost.

Perhaps there is a faster way?
I was afraid to ask Ghost to recover a drive, as I do not know whether drive recovery also restores the drive format.