Article:		Windows XP from a Mac Perspective
Subject:		Use NTFS
Date:		2002-02-13 03:10:17
From:		wudbaer
To get rid of the annoying and long file system checks after a crash (and to get other great advantages, like better use of your disk space) you should use XP's NTFS file system instead of FAT32 which is IMO only there for reasons of backwards compatibility. NTFS is in my eyes one of the key advantages all OS'ses of the NT line had over the Win95/98/ME line and it always makes my heart bleed to see NT/W2K/XP installed using FAT32 or even the aged FAT. With NT/W2K there used to be a tool to convert FAT/FAT32 to NTFS without data loss (convert.exe), I'm not sure if it's still there with XP, but it's worth trying. As far as I understand, XP Home also does support only a subset of NTFS's capabilities (e.g. no encryption and only reduced means for security settings) but it should be there (I have only tried XP Professional) and is in any case worth using.

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Use NTFS -- Thanks for this
  2002-02-13 11:08:34  Derrick Story | [Reply | View]
  
  
  That's a terrific explanation. Does anyone have anything to add to this? And, where the heck were you two weeks ago when I was setting up XP? ;)
• Use NTFS -- Thanks for this
  2002-02-14 17:27:07  acidbrnd [Reply | View]
  
  
  cvt is the convert tool but it's best to do a clean install with formatting the HD to NTFS and not a convert. From what I've noticed you will lose some speed in a converation to NTFS instead of a full blown format and reinstall.