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madrusty289
2.24.04, 7:57 pm
Now that I have Windows XP and very little that I care about on my hard drive, I'm considering reformatting my drive to NTFS, based on the recommendation of my computer-savvy friend. My question is whether or not this is a good idea. Will it help performance?
Ntfs is the way to go! Way faster than FAT32, and better file compression, read, and write.
rc10gt2003
2.24.04, 8:31 pm
Yea , go with Ntfs !
Dirt_Head
2.24.04, 9:15 pm
Definately go with NTSF
madrusty289
2.24.04, 10:23 pm
It is noticeably faster, right? Because that's really all I care about. And can I format an external drive from the Windows CD?
On a different Windows XP-related note, I was wondering if there were any Win XP features that I should take advantage of. I know about transparacy, which I'll put to use, but what else is there? Tell me I didn't upgrade for nothing....
Bigwrenn
2.24.04, 10:28 pm
Take about 1.5 hours and go thru all the system options, window options, and device options and you will be amazed compared to Win ME.
It is noticeably faster but not a night and day difference!
Formatting an external hard drive can be tricky with windows. I don't think it will let you since the system will identify it as external. The only way you can do that is to have a product key that will allow multiple installations! That's very expensive though.
madrusty289
2.25.04, 6:24 pm
I'm still yet to find any truly useful new features...
Can anyone give me a good reason not to switch to NTFS? And I figured out I can do it without deleting my files. I'm going to anyway, but it's good to have that option.
NTFS is surely the best way to go. It's semi faster, and the best feature is that it supports security. If you are on a network and have shared folders, you can protect your files and folders preventing people from reading them or even seeing them.
The only con I can think of is that it will take up a little bit more space from your hard drive for some reason and if you are reinstalling after reformatting and need to do it from DOS, you will have to fdisk the drive to a fat32 format, since NTFS drives can't be read by DOS, unless I don't know of a way to do it. If someone does, hook it up! :)
Pz!
madrusty289
2.28.04, 1:26 pm
I have commited myself to converting to NTFS this weekend. But I realized that I don't know how. One of my friends recommended booting from the WinXP CD, but that didn't work. ND4SPDR recommends fdisk, then converting. See, the main problem is that I want all of my files deleted. I know how to do the conversion keeping the files intact, but not the other way around. Any help is greatly appreciated.
EDIT: I think I have figured out a way. I can do a full install of XP, which deletes the drive, then do a regular conversion. Thoughts?
you should be able to select NTFS when doing the installation. If you do a full install and delete your existing partitions you don't need to convert it, just select NTFS for the formatting.
marshallh
3.01.04, 3:21 pm
One important thing to mention, once you format your drive, Windows XP will lose your activation, and you'll have to pay for another copy so you can activate ocne again. One way to get around this is:
Copy wpa.dbl from your system directory to several different floppies, because one might develop bad sectors on you. Then ocne you have Winxp back installed, it might say it is unactivated. In that case, just copy wpa.dbl from one of the floppies back into your system directory, and reboot.
Hope this helps!
There are many ways around Windows XP activation...
madrusty289
3.01.04, 5:40 pm
cabe777 said:
you should be able to select NTFS when doing the installation. If you do a full install and delete your existing partitions you don't need to convert it, just select NTFS for the formatting.
That is exactly what I did. I have NTFS now, but one major problem: my files didn't get deleted. So, my next question is, how do I delete the files of my hard drive with NTFS?
Are you wanting to completely wipe it clean?
madrusty289
3.01.04, 5:59 pm
Yea, I have way too much useless stuff bogging it down.
are you sure that when you did the install you deleted all of the existing partitions???
If you have WIN XP installed and the NTFS format, then all you have to do is a format on the local disk. Go to my computer and click on local disk(hard drive) and right click on the icon. You will see in the drop down menu "format", click on that and from there it will walk you thru it. To completely "wipe" your hard drive then you need to get rid of all partitions while in the format prompt. Then format the drive with one partition and that should do it.
Addendum: Be warned it will take about 45 mins to an hour, depending on your computer.
madrusty289
3.01.04, 6:46 pm
Oh man! Last questions before I proceed:
1) What should the "allocation unit size" be set to?
2) Do I want to enable compression?
marshallh
3.03.04, 9:01 am
2) Don't enable compression, it's jsut a legacy feature left over from the Windows NT 3.51 days.
madrusty289
3.03.04, 6:07 pm
Well, the deed is done. I must say, that was the hardest computer-related task I've ever done. In short: formatting didn't work, my comp wouldn't boot from the XP CD, I had to make boot disks, installed XP twice yesterday. Yea, barrels of fun:D
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