8204WLMi, Fat32 and NTFS

My 8204WLMi has just arrived and very nice it seems too so far, much better than the Dell Inspiron 6000 that I've returned (USB fault).

Anyway, as everyone knows the Acer uses Fat32. The external hard-drive that I use for backing up files uses NTFS. Am I going to run into any problems if I continue to backup files from a Fat32 system to an NTFS drive? I can't seem to re-format the external drive as NTFS through Windows Explorer - it only provides NTFS as the available file format.

I've just copied my data from the external drive to the new laptop and it *seems* to be OK...

 

The OS will take care of the conversions between the two formats when you back up or restore. I wonder why the disk is formatted FAT32 - seems surprising at this point in the game.

Anyway, I'm waiting to get my 8204 - hopefully it will ship this week.

- Ed

 

I think it's Fat32 because of the DOS-based System Restore program that Acer uses.

OK, so what you're saying is that when you copy a file from a FAT32 system to NTFS, it converts it on the fly? And therefore I have nothing to worry about?

For everyone who's interested in the Travelmate 8204, I'm in the UK and pre-ordered it from Insight. Delivery was 2 days before the promised date of Feb 3rd

 

You can convert the FAT32 into NTFS, you know this right?

 

Yes, but how difficult is it, and will it affect the partitions or any of the Acer software?

I'd rather just leave the laptop as it is, unless a)it will cause problems with backing-up my data and b)it's straightforward to convert to NTFS.

 

converting to NTFS is very easy. Use a program called "Partition Magic"

It cost money so maybe if one of ur friends has a copy u can borrow it off them

 

http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm

Go here, you can change your Hard Drive to NTFS w/o any special program.

 

So I can use either of those programs to convert both my C and D partioned drives, without affecting the installed programs or Acer's system recovery utility?

 

recovery, reshmuvery. Just use system restore. If that fails, format your hard disk.

 

Jeez, I don't know why people keep banging on about using PT to convert a drive to NTFS. XP has it's own utility to do this and it does it very well. Just type in convert to NTFS in help and support and it will give you the answer. It's simple, doesn't lose you any data and it's free....
ChrisC

 

They use FAT32 because their restore method runs under DOS. If you convert the drives to NTFS (which of course is better and easy to do with the command line CONVERT comand) You may not be able to restore the system if it becomes badly corrupted. I was told by tech support that if you convert to NTFS you wouldn't be able to recover it and would need an actual Windows disk, which of course these units don't come with. When you do a system backup the system uses the D:\ partition to hold an image of the system drive that it can then burn to CD or DVD. Once that's done, you can delete the image on the D:\ drive and use the space. For my own purposes. I split the 54GB D :\ partition into a 34GB and a smaller 20GB E:\ Partition (using Acronis Disk Director). I then converted E:\ to NTFS for storing my data, photos, documents where i can have the added security and do seperate backups on with another utility. THis way the D:\ Partition should still have enough space for restore images and i can use Acer's restore which of course will bring back all the custom Acer functionality and still use NTFS where i need it.

 

Well, here's a caveat for you. I converted my C: drive to NTFS. Later on I tried to add IIS and Indexing XP components, and it failed saying that the files couldn't be copied (from C:\i386). The files were there. I called Acer and they said that the installer could only update those components to a FAT32 disk. Unfortunately, I don't have a SP2 CD for XP so if what the rep said is true, I'm honked. Also, the notes on the Acer support site imply that the eRecovery program only works for FAT32 as well.

- Ed

 

Okay, to get this straight: if you convert your C: and D: partitions to NTFS, then even if the hidden partition is kept at FAT32 (and indeed, I can't seem to change it on my 5672), then the system can't be converted back to factory defaults?

I mean to say: there's no restore option that will blow away whatever's there and then restore the original partitions?

 

Apparently once you convert to NTFS you can't go back. If you convert C:\ eRecovery won't be able to write the OS and APPS files to the C:\ partition. I'm not sure if it needs the D:\ partition in order to restore the system but it does need it to create backup images to be either kept on that drive or written to CD/DVD

 

My, but that's confusing. Every other recovery utility I've used just deletes everything and starts over, rather than writing anything to existing partitions (which, of course, requires _deleting_ everything that's there before writing, otherwise existing bits can be left behind).

Also, are you saying that the hidden partition doesn't contain the actual restore bits, but rather writes them to the D:\ partition? When I look at my 5672, I see three partitions: C:\, D:\, and a hidden partition that's 3.9GBs; isn't the latter where the recovery data actually resides?

Craziness... But, I did make a backup of the original state to DVD. Can I use this to blow everything back on the system, if I were to wipe completely clean and start over?

 

Alrighty, I just ran the restore utility on my 5672, and it worked with no problem with my C: partition as NTFS. It just overwrote everything as expected.

So, unless that 8204 is different, I'm going to assume that it's fine to convert to NTFS. Maybe it was older Acer systems that had the limitation?

 

I also had to convert C: to ntfs (using convert.exe) in order to install IIS, and it worked just fine for me - no prompts for a Windows disc.. Bizarre!