Use NTFS for All Drives
If you've upgraded from Windows 98 or Windows Me to Windows XP, one or more drives on your system might still be using the FAT32 file system. Even on a clean installation of Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you have the option to choose FAT32 or NTFS. Some users do choose FAT32, either from force of habit or because they want to be able to access the data on that drive from earlier versions of Windows. The security benefits of NTFS are overwhelming in comparison to FAT32 drives, however. Continuing to use FAT32 is justifiable only on computers where data security is less important than the ability to boot into multiple operating systems.

To quickly determine the file system in use on a given drive, open the My Computer window, right-click the icon for any drive, and choose Properties. The current file system is listed on the General tab, as shown here.


To convert a FAT32 drive to NTFS, you must use the command-line Convert utility with the /FS:NTFS switch. If you attempt to run this command on a drive that contains Windows system files or the system paging file, Windows will schedule the conversion to take place at startup after you reboot the computer.

NOTE
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Converting a FAT32 drive to NTFS on a computer that was upgraded to Windows XP from an earlier version of Windows can have unintended negative consequences for performance. For a discussion of the best way to carry out this conversion, see Chapter 26, "Managing Disks and Drives," in our earlier book, Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out (Microsoft Press, 2001).

Libellés : Drives, NTFS, Use