Is there any way to change a FAT partition into an NTFS one on windows XP? Or resize it?

December 14, 2003 4:24 PM

Is there any way to change a FAT partition into an NTFS one on windows XP? Or resize it? Without buying / cracking any software?
posted by signal to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Unfortunately, PartitionMagic is the only software I know of that'll do it. But you *do* have to buy (or crack) it. But it's not too hard to do either of those things...
posted by armoured-ant at 4:29 PM on December 14, 2003

How to Convert FAT Disks to NTFS
posted by TimeFactor at 4:29 PM on December 14, 2003

In xp pro, here's what I've done.

Go to start/control panel/admin tools/computer management then go to the disk manger tab. Right click the disk and there should be an option to convert.
posted by mathowie at 5:03 PM on December 14, 2003

Response by poster: What I really want to do is expand a partition to take up an entire physical drive and convert it to NTFS. So I guess I'm going the Partition Magic route.

Matt, I'm also on XP pro, and don't get an option to convert, just Format, Delete, Mark as Active, etc.

Thanks, all.
posted by signal at 5:14 PM on December 14, 2003

File - Run - "cmd" hit Enter. Type "convert /?" into the window that appears. There's your instructions.
posted by majick at 5:27 PM on December 14, 2003

convert command, but i don't think you can resize w/o deleting and recreating (or partition magic)
posted by adampsyche at 5:50 PM on December 14, 2003

i'm pretty sure you can resize partitions without losing data (make them larger) - i've done it on linux install. i would guess this is more likely to work with fat than ntfs. so first step i'd try is booting into linux from cd and using an appropriate tool.

for conversion from fat to ntfs, i think sweetcode listed a solution recently. yep - check http://www.sweetcode.org second entry (convertfs).

i hear good things about knoppix, so that might be the best linux to boot into.
posted by andrew cooke at 1:57 AM on December 15, 2003

oh, and gnu parted is the tool for changing partition size - do it before chaging type. http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/parted.html
posted by andrew cooke at 1:59 AM on December 15, 2003

This should be way too obvious to be worth saying, except that I see people find excuses to skip it all the time: make a full backup first!
posted by fuzz at 3:32 AM on December 15, 2003

Response by poster: Ended up using Partition Magic, which apart from the fact that it works at all, is also cool in that you set up a long list of chores (e.g.: Delete Partion F:, Create Partition G:, Rename G:, etc.), and it re-boots the system, does everything and comes back up with everything in place.
posted by signal at 5:40 AM on December 15, 2003