can I use fat 32 partitions with RAID

Probably a dumb question but I have 2 fasttrack 100lite ide RAID channels on my MB and want to play around some with it. I have 4 identical 20gb, ata100, 7200rpm hd's that I want to use, can I use fat32 partitions on those drives? Want to use fat 32 because all my other drives are fat32 and fat cannot access ntfs(correct?).

Not really interested in fault tolerance, but speed, and does not need to be bootable, so is my best bet 1 array & raid 0 (striping). What about block size, just play and see what works best?

On another note any issues converting existing hd's(ones that already hold data) from fat 32 to ntfs using something like the drive converter in W2k or XP?

Andy

NTFS can not read FAT32 nor can FAT32 read NTFS. They are file systems & are not capable of reading themselves or writing for that matter. I think your asking if an operating system can read a certain file system while it is on a different file system it self. The ability to do that resides on the Operating System. Windows XP or Windows 2000 can reside on either NTFS or FAT32 & will still be able to access any working drive on either file system. Windows 98SE can not read NTFS but only FAT32.

The ideal solution for a 4 HDD RAID0 Array would be on a 4 channel controller where each drive is set to master. This isn't a good solution with IDE, PATA or SATA, since the increased access time will negate the increased STR for low to medium disk usage. There is even a chance of poorer performance.

Stripe size is determined first by what the controller likes, which is a narrow window for example HP372A with BIOS 2.34 likes 16K to 64K while ICH5R likes 128K with the most recent BIOS. Test to see which you like best.

The convert utility will work but it is recommended to backup whatever data before the conversion just to make sure.