Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Changing FAT32 to NTFS

In the Lenovo S10, the HDD is partitioned into C: drive and D: drive (plus another hidden partition). To cater for the One Key Recovery (OKR) process, the C: drive is formatted in FAT32 while D: drive is in NTFS. Not to worry, it is very easy to convert the C: drive to the more efficient NTFS file system. Details are below, this is retrived from the Lenovo Ideapad S Wiki.

"The S10 is shipped by default with the C: partition formatted with FAT32 file system as opposed to the NTFS file system. This can be changed by using Windows XP's built in converter.
Keep in mind the following:
*This process will only convert C: from FAT32 to NTFS. It will NOT resize the partitions.
*Converting the C: partition from FAT32 to NTFS will not affect the One Key Recovery program.
*Windows XP does not include a program to convert NTFS back to FAT32
*If you do wish to return to FAT32, One Key Recovery can replace the C: partition with a factory fresh image, including FAT32. The One Key Recovery process removes ALL data, including non-factory installed software, stored on the C: partition.


Back up your data first and use these instructions at your own risk:

1. Start by opening the command prompt. Click Start, then Run. Type cmd then press enter.
2. At the command prompt type: convert C: /fs:ntfs and press enter.
3. You will be presented with the following: Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N)
4. Type N and press enter.
5. You will then see the following: Would you like to schedule it to be converted the next time the system restarts (Y/N)?
6. Type Y and press enter.
7. Close the command prompt and reboot your computer.
8. Windows will perform a disk check followed by the partition conversion from FAT32 to NTFS. "

That's it. I did mine yesterday and it took about 7 minutes. The time will depend on the size and number of files on your S10 so it's better to do it in the early days to save some time.

Ronald Kwok
http://ronaldkwok.atomicblog.hop.clickbank.net/


4 comments:

  1. is your computer running a little more slowly than before? after conversion the cluster size will be 32 kb instead of the optimal for ntfs, 4096 bytes

    ReplyDelete
  2. My S10-2 have 2 NTFS drives (C:100GB & D:30GB). I try to use Partition Magic to resize C and increase D drive. Unfortunatelly, the program show error on unrecognized partition and not run. Is it because of "another hidden partition" mentioned above?

    Do you have any idea how to resize the partition in other ways?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi re-minisce,
    Sorry for this late respond, missed it somehow. I did not notice any difference in speed since most of the tasks were for surfing and the speed of the internet connection itself varied so much that it made observing the speed futile.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi udom,
    I have not used Partition Magic on my S10 but based on previous experience, it should be able to resize the partitions as required. Check to see if any of the partitions is protected. Otherwise, try another disk prtition program. Remember that once you resize your partitions, you'll lose the One Key Recovery function to reset to factory default. Most people don't care anyway.

    ReplyDelete