Acer 5002WLMi - Why Fat 32?

What would be the reason Acer has this 5002WLMi formatted as Fat 32? I seem to remember reading somewhere else another person reported that Acer had his system as Fat 32 also. Is this the norm for Acer?
And on this brand new system the 100 Gb hard drive was divided into two equal parts. This I can live with but with the fat 32 and a 100 Gb drive there is going to be a heck of a lot of wasted space due to cluster slack.
I don't want to convert to NTFS as it may void the warranty.

 

Yes, FAT32 is the norm for Acers - no idea why.

Just convert it to NTFS, you'll be much happier.

Also, I think it is annoying that Acer divided the hard drive into two partitions. They should have left it as just one. But, oh well.

 

They make their partitions FAT32 because of their Restore/"snapshot" app. It makes a copy of the HDD (snapshot) and saves it in the 2nd partition. If you need to restore, it'll boot into DOS and restore from that's 2nd partition. Since you can't access NTFS partitions in DOS (without 3rd party tools), it needs to be FAT32.

You should be able to convert your main C: partition, but I think you must leave the 2nd partition as FAT32 for the app to work properly.

If you decide you'll never use this app, then you can just wipe the system and reload with NTFS. Just be cautious of the hidden recovery partition (should store a copy of your original restore files/images).

-Vb-

 

Ah, makes sense ... I'll leave it that way then.

 

Hi,
I've just performed a recovery after having run my HD with NTFS on the whole disc without the the second, or 'D' drive. I booted from the recovery CD and it restored my system fine asking for each CD on the way. It didn't created a 'D' at all. I then converted the whole drive back to NTFS as it was before the recovery. On my 1801 the hidden partition actually contains the Aspire software enabling it to run DVD's, music and photos without booting into the OS....
ChrisC