Formatting a drive from FAT32 to NTFS
(also converting fat32 to NTFS)
Warning!! Formatting a drive with data on it will lead to data loss, only proceed if you know what you are doing.
In this document we will go over the procedure for converting a drive to NTFS.
- You will need a Computer with Windows 2000, XP, Vista or 7
- The Drive you want to format
- You may need to be logged on as an Administrator to complete this task.
You may need to format/convert the following Hardware over to NTFS:
- USB Flash Drives
- IDE/SATA Hard Drives
- ESATA and Firewire external drives
For the following reasons:
- Security on files/permissions on files
- Capcity for larger files (Greater than 2GB)
- File Encryption & Compression (EFS)
Converting a drive to NTFS on the Command prompt (CMD)
C:\>convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs
After some time the procedure will be completed, in some cases such as System drive like C: the machine will need to reboot to finsh the process.