Been trying to convert fat32 external drive to NTFS for a whole day now. The drive is full at 1TB and I have no room to on any of my other drives to backup and format...I need to be able to convert from one fat32 to NTFS without losing data.
First I tried partitionmagic, which gave me "autoconv.exe not found". So i expanded that from the windows disc and partition magic now said "can't determine filesystem of drive H:".
So I gave up on partition magic and tried Windows' built-in "convert" utility. Unfortunately it says "Convert does not support fat32 drives" (which is what I thought convert was made for...way to go Microsoft).
So after that little slap in the face I decided to try Linux. I could have sworn gparted could convert one FS to another but apparently not. So I decided to have it simply resize the partition, create NTFS in free space, copy data and repeat. Unfortunately gparted took about 40 minutes and apparently stopped so i closed it.
So my questions: how can I convert fat32 to ntfs without losing data and not using CONVERT, PM8, partition assistant, partition master or gparted?
When I tried EASEUS (partition master) it said "there was an error in converting, please check the drive for errors" (paraphrased). I did it's two built in checks and chkdsk and neither found any errors. Tried to convert again after checking and received the same message
Trying O&O partition manager now, it doesn't look like it has a convert function but i'll see if I can delete some stuff, resize the partition down to half, convert free space to NTFS, copy remaining data over and resize the NTFS partition to full
w00ly, what windows are you using? maybe problem is the drive is to full or problem with usb interface. is the enclosure a sealed unit or can you remove the hd & insert it into your pc as long as your motherboard has same interface as the hard drive has?
Windows XP. I cleared about a quarter of the stuff off the drive but the rest I want to keep. I also tried connecting it internally but that was a no-go as well. I figured out the initial issue with convert was because I'm using a strip-downed XP ("performance edition"), where I expanded the convert.ex_ from the windows disc i386 folder but didnt expand the related dll file.
So after fixing that now it's saying
Determining disk space required for file system conversion...
Total disk space: 976768002 KB
Free space on volume: 283173248 KB
Space required for conversion: 1376398 KB
Converting file system
Insufficient Memory
Error converting file MACOSX~1.ISO.
The file may be damaged or there may be insufficient disk space.
Error converting directory $RZXUSQZ.
The directory may be damaged or there may be insufficient disk space.
Error converting directory S-1-5-~1.
The directory may be damaged or there may be insufficient disk space.
Error converting directory $RECYCLE.BIN.
The directory may be damaged or there may be insufficient disk space.
Error converting directory BACKUP~1.
The directory may be damaged or there may be insufficient disk space.
The conversion failed.
H: was not converted to NTFS
Ran chkdsk /r with no errors found. Freed up space on both that drive and my C: drive, same error. :\
move all data to other drives,delete & reformat,put data back,not what you want to hear i know sometimes longest way is quickest,other option is leave as is & buy a larger drive
