Backing up cross fat32 files on ntfs file system

[icuben]

Can u do it?
I wanna back **** up from my box currently running 98 and change it to xp pro, and i wanna put my stuff on me mates xp pro system which is running ntfs filing system.
I dont even really understand what the differences are and anything bout file systems or what eva they are so maybe this should be in newbies can anyone please fill me in.

Thanks big time
Benno:cool:

[Stealth]

I got this from anandtech.com the advantages of ntfs over fat32 are:
NTFS (New Technologies File System) has all of the basic capabilities of FAT, and it provides the following advantages over the FAT and FAT 32 file systems:

File security. Access rights can be assigned to files and directories, allowing users full access, partial access or no access at all to data on your hard disk.

Disk compression. File and directory compression can be performed directly without the need for third party utilities, saving space, while allowing for transparent access and operation to the user.

Support for large hard disks, with a theoretical limit of 16 ExaBytes, and up to 2 TeraBytes (TB).

NTFS supports Unicode, and natively supports long file names.

Disk quotas can be assigned, limiting the amount of disk space users can access on a partition.

Encryption. The NTFS 5.0 file system can automatically encrypt and decrypt file data as it is read and written to the disk.


Fault tolerance: file system journaling. See below.

Mounted drives: attach volumes to an empty folder. Operates much like the Assign command from DOS.

Hard links: create an NTFS-based link to a given file.

Sparse files: assign and reserve hard disk space to specific files.

File Streams: multiple data streams are supported and accessible with NTFS.

so hopfully that will explaine the difference between the two for you, and now for your other ?, can fat32 be converted to ntfs, anwser: yes, I think XP can do it through the transfer wizzard or somthing like that, also partition magic says it can convert an entire fat32 partition or drive into ntfs, I have never tried either, so I can't tell you it will absolutly work.

[mjones73]

And yes you can copy files from a FAT32 partition to a NTFS partition, the files don't know any different.