External & Internal Hard Drive Compatability

Troops:

If you want to backup your system onto an external drive must it have the same format as your internal drive? For example, if your internal drive is NTFS can you back it up to an external drive that had been formated with FAT32?

Is there some penalty if you do so?

David Favin

 

Hello David,

Yes you can and no penalty other than:

FAT32 files tend to fragment more. If you're using the drive as a backup - not very important. Most users aren't going to notice a difference.

And, FAT32 will not support file sizes greater than 4GB. If by "backing up" you mean imaging and the image file is going to be greater than 4GB, then FAT32 is not an option.

 

Chaz:
Thanks for a direct answer. Yes, I meant imaging and I mean to image files greater than 4 Gb so you have cautioned me properly. Thanks for your response.

David

 

Hi David,

It's the Image file size that's important. Imaging software will optionally compress the Image file with the user picking a compression ratio. The OS partition that I'm on now is 3.29 GB, the image of it is 1.81 GB on my external drive.

My external drives are NTFS as is the OS partition.

 

Poor choice of words

The OS partition size is 12 GB. The size of the OS is 3.29 GB.

 

Chaz:

Let me re-frame the question a slight bit.

Suppose I have two formatted OS: one FAT32 and the other NTFS. Suppose I also have two differently formatted external drives ..one FAT32 and the other NTFS.

Suppose I use each of these disks with its correspondingly formatted OS and copy the same files (not back up) onto the disks.

Now interchange the two external drives and associate them with the differently formatted OS. Will WINDOWS EXPLORER in each system be able to list the files on the external drives? Can these files now be copied?

David

 

Hi David,

The answer is yes - to XP, there is no difference between the two file formats as far as the ability of XP to read/write the file format of either one transparently.

On my Desktop, I'm dual booting two XP's, one is formated with FAT32, the other NTFS. They both handle each other's files.

The attachment is my Desktop.

C is an XP, D is an XP and both can access all the other partitions/drives. I could have had one or both of the external drives (Disk 2/Disk3) formatted as FAT32 - would make no difference.

 

Chaz:
Thanks for the encouraging answer. I shall proceed now with some confidence (which is kinda nice to have.... for a change)

David

 

My pleasure David