Advanced Computer concern

This is probably well beyond the scope of a board like this one which does not specialize in support. But it also seems to be beyond the scope of of many others on the 4 Mac specialized web boards that I am on as well! I could try a Yahoo or Google Group, or IRC but I have not as the web boards are what gets the most attention.
So this morning I posted this to a Windows web board, 2 NewsGroups, and this board. I am not asking for help, I am just asking for an experience from someone that has done this.

Have any of you ever tried this? If so what was the end result? I have my Mac Boot Camp partition in the FAT32 format. Unfortunately I cannot move the partition to a new and larger hard drive without it being in the NTFS format as WinClone will not recognize FAT32. I fear incompatibility with some apps after the conversion as is common on Windows operating systems.

http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm

Convert FAT to NTFS
Q: Is it possible to convert a FAT32 Hard Drive to NTFS without losing all data on the drive? I like to change from FAT32 to NTFS, my operating system is Windows XP PRO, how can I do that? Without the lost of my programs?
A: Standard Windows utility that is called CONVERT serves this purpose
Just go to the Command Prompt and execute the command:
C:\> CONVERT C: /fs:ntfsWhere C: is a name of the drive you want to convert.
After machine re-boot conversion process will start and you'll have your FAT32 converted to NTFS without of data loss.

[b]Data loss is not the same as program incompatibility.[/b]

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Justin on July 6, 2011 at 6:29am

Unless you're using very old programs you won't have any incompatibility issues. Consider that all flash drives come in FAT32 format and you can transfer data (and programs) back and forth between that and an NTFS drive without issue.

In looking up some conversion guides, it doesn't appear that converting will affect the integrity of any files either. It's just that the process may take a while.

Permalink Reply by Shane Ede on July 6, 2011 at 7:38am

We've done this a quite a few times on the workstations at work and very rarely have any problems. It does take a while, but when you consider that it's converting the entire partition, that isn't all that unreasonable. You shouldn't have any compatibility issues unless you're using some very old software. Anything written since the invention of NTFS (95ish? I think.) should make the transition with no problems.

Permalink Reply by John Wolf on July 8, 2011 at 2:16am