converting file systems

I want to convert my C drive to NTFS from FAT32 in the command prompt, but I'm concerned about the effect this might have on any of acers hidden recovery partitions I've heard so much about. Does anyone know of any risks this conversion has?

 

If you recover through the use of Recovery CD's you won't have a problem. When you restore however your C: drive will be back to FAT32.

If you recover through the recovery partition at start up (by using ALT-F10) I'm not sure if the conversion to NTFS will have any effect on that, but I know that messing around with partitions will cause the ALT-F10 method to fail.

 

I have used the convert to NTFS many times on the c drive on both my acer notebooks and it has never interfered with the recovery process in anyway. No matter if you use the CD or the partition it does not matter, anytime you recover to factory default it will restore the C drive to fat32 with no problems or side effects. So if you have heard anything that converting the C drive to NTFS will "mess up your recovery partition" it is nothing but folly.

Go ahead and convert your C drive in the windows command shell to NTFS after all NTFS is more secure that fat32...but whatever you do DON'T mess with the PQService partition (acer recovery partition) , i.e don't try to change that from fat32 to anything else otherwise you will have big problems!!!

On a side note the only time the alt+f10 will fail is if you use a non factory version of windows and it overwrites acer's special MBR which allows alt+f10 to work.

 

don't convert to ntfs, slows system down big time, my computer became very unstable. not recommended at all.

 

That is just your notebook I have never experienced any slow downs after converting from Fat32 to NTFS on any computer whether it be notebook or desktop.

 

Converting to NTFS shouldn't break anything but there's always that fluke risk of something screwing up. To be safe, run a chkdsk on the drive, making sure to select Fix File System Errors, before you format to NTFS.

On a side note, while NTFS is the better file system by far, I've noticed that for some reason, the system seems to run faster when on FAT32. If you don't plan on having any files larger than 4GB and you 're not a heavy computer user, you don't need to convert to NTFS.

Also, when you format, look up the optional parameters and set your cluster size to 4KB. Otherwise, the command defaults to 512 Bytes.

 

when I converted ther ewas no option for 4 hb clusters,

4 days after I converted the file system on my ferrari I had to reinstall windows.

I know that NTFS is faster if it is formated that way when the os is installed otherwise still not recommeded.

my ferrari was about 2 times faster in FAT32

 

It's an optional parameter to the Format command. Typing "Format /?" in command line will list all available parameters.

 

Just go ahead and convert it via the console command line. It will do a disk check and the conversion itself at the next reboot. Just in case, you might use this occasion as an opportunity to backup all your data. There are no options available to worry about. It just converts, and it won't be much different than if your computer had come formatted as NTFS in the first place. Make sure that afterwards, you have deselected defragmentation in Acer Empowering Technology Performance Management, because that is meant for FAT32 and it can slow things down once you are using NTFS.