Q: Well my existing hard drive gave me an error (but still working), so Dell sent me another hard drive replacement. I plan on using both hard drives on my PC instead of replacing my old hard drive. My old (current) hard disk is formatted to NTFS. Now, when I install the new hard drive, is it okay if I let Windows XP and everything on my old drive as long as the primary (boot) drive isnt? With the new drive if I install XP on, I must also reformat the disk to NTFS, or do I have to say FAT32 (is that possible that my old hard drive is NTFS, it will conflict)?
I am planning on installing PC games and I really need them for a good run (P4 1.3GHz, 128MB PC800 RAM, GeForce 2 MX). Do I have a partition on the new drive with Windows 98 for playing games? Or there is not much difference? Which format is better for games FAT32 or NTFS? Thanks for your help.
Re:"If you need to access a NTFS partition through Windows 98 there are ways to accomplish this. SysInternals offers a free driver that will allow read access to NTFS partitions.
"If you need full access through Windows 98 you can buy the full version of the driver through WinInternals for $49."
Interesting, always software to do something for the right price.:)
Changing the System/Boot Drive letter is a little more complex. For the most part, this is not recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed. The only time that you may want to do this is when the drive letters get changed without any user intervention. This may happen when you break a mirror volume or there is a drive configuration change. This should be a rare occurrence and you should change the drive letters back to match the initial installation.
NOTE : In these steps, drive D refers to the (wrong) drive letter assigned to a volume, and drive C refers to the (new) drive letter you want to change to, or to assign to the volume.
This procedure swaps drive letters for drives C and D. If you do not need to swap drive letters, simply name the \DosDevice\letter: value to any new drive letter not in use.
For your safety, it is best to make a full system backup of the computer and system state.
Log on as an Administrator.
Start Regedt32.exe.
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Click MountedDevices.
On the Security menu, click Permissions.
Check to make sure Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.
NOTE : You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:". (This will free up drive letter C: to be used later.)
Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename , and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".
Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.
Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).
Restart the computer.
Doable yes, simple maybe depending on user, avoidable definately.;)
Andy, yes I would be interested in the details if you could point me to a reference, thanks.
Re:You need NTFS on the new drive if you want to be able to read the old driveIncorrect. Please read the FAQ: Using FAT32 and NTFS on the same system (http://www.{$MySite}/guides/viewfaq.html?i=94)
Also, I recommend having your old drive disconnected when installing XP on the new drive as sometimes it will make the new drive D which isn't easily fixable.Please read the FAQ: How do I change drive letters? (http://www.{$MySite}/guides/viewfaq.html?i=108) Quite simple really.
What's the reason for this Andy?It's the way the FAT32 FAT has been designed, as opposed to the NTFS MFT. Do you want me to go into detail about it?
Re:You need NTFS on the new drive if you want to be able to read the old drive. I wouldn't mess with the dual boot feature not worth the trouble when XP will run games just fine. Also, I recommend having your old drive disconnected when installing XP on the new drive as sometimes it will make the new drive D which isn't easily fixable.
I really like this feature:
"As drive sizes and the sheer number of files on a partition increases, NTFS's performance does not degrade. On partitions or directories with several thousands of files, FAT32 operations slow to a crawl." Andy Hui
What's the reason for this Andy?
Re:Please read the FAQ: FAT32 vs NTFS (http://www.{$MySite}/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63).
Re:NTFS better sercurity
FAT32 faster
i would say FAT32
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