New Acer user...some questions please

Hi guys.
I recently bought a 5102 Aspire. (My first Notebook in AGES)

A few questions for you gurus if you don't mind.

From looking around here, I know a lot of you get rid of all the Acer Utilities and/or reformat and start over.
I must say though, I actually like some of them. (I also don't want to do anything drastic in case I want to return it within the next 14 days).

Does the Recovery Software actually work well?
First, I made backup DVD's of the factory settings.
Then, after installing all my programs and setting it up the way I wanted, I created a full user backup on the 2nd partition (as well as some DVD's)...only took about 15 minutes.

Has anyone used the recovery software successfully to back up to a user defined date? (Either from the 2nd partition and/or from the DVD's?)

I use Acronis TI on my desktops, but this Acer recovery utility will be just fine for me if it actually works

And last, If and when I decide to CONVERT to NTFS (using the C: /fs:ntfs command), I've heard that you end up with a very small cluster size (like 1kb or even 512 bytes), which can be much less efficient than the 4KB default for XP on a clean install.

Is this true?
And if so, is there any way to convert to NTFS and achieve a 4KB Cluster size?

I saw a friend convert and he ended up with this small cluster size....his performance was actually worse with NTFS than with FAT 32.

If that's the case,the only advantage I see with NTFS with this Laptop (unless I do a clean install), is the file size limitations of Fat32.

Any comments on any or all of the above would be appreciated.

 

I used the recovery partition once to reset my Acer laptop as I was going to sell the laptop. It works fine, it just sets the hard drive to how it was when you first got it. No need to mess about with recovery DVDs and the like.

I converted my hard drive to NTFS with Partition magic, and the first time I did it it set the cluster size to something like 1kb, but that was easily converted to 4kb with Partition Magic again.

 

Thanks for the reply sionyboy

I was aware of the default factory backup on the hidden D' partition.
I was more wondering if anyone had restored a 'user defined' backup.

That is, say you screw something up and what to go back to a certain point you created, then has anyone used this recovery software successfully to go back to that particular point where all your programs are still intact? (Not the original factory default, but to a point you made with the utility AFTER installing programs).

And concerning the NTFS conversion, from looking around here, if I were to convert my C partition to NTFS, I wonder if the hidden factory default 'D' backup would still be able to restore it to factory if I wanted to sell it or return it?
I thought I read here in the forum that the factory recovery won't work anymore if you convert your C drive to NTFS?

And last...I was afraid that's what you would say when converting from Fat32 to NTFS....I guess you need a third party utility (like partition magic) to do this, otherwise you end up with the less efficient 512 Byte cluster size rather than the 4kb size that is native to a clean install of XP.

Doesn't XP have anything built in the maintain a 4KB Cluster size when converting?

Thanks again for any insight.

 

The recovery partition will work even if you convert to NTFS and merge the two partitions. Its just set to write the info to C:, it doesn't check for NTFS/FAT32 or whether your partitions are still the same (at least, thats what it did on mine anyway)

 

So the eRecovery as you said, reformats the HDD to FAT32 of it has been converted to NTFS.?

 

That's a good question LecterUK.

I'm not totally convinced that once you convert to NTFS, that you could successfully recover back to factory default with the acer utilities.

Personally, I'd be afraid to try it at this point.
I just bought this thing and it seems to me I've read that if you convert to NTFS (and can't restore to factory defaults), the warranty will be void.

I've often been wrong, so if anyone could shed some light on this I would appreciate it.

 

ive formatted plenty of times already on my new machine from the recovery partition using eRevovery and even tho ive used the cmd prompt to convert fat32 to ntfs it always reverts back to fat 32.

what im now wondering is after using the cmd prompt to convert to ntfs is it really that inefficient over a proper XP fresh install because of the cluster size? or will partition magic make my machine happy again?