Hi!
you have a flash drive or an external hard drive that
currently has FAT32 file system and you want to change it to NTFS,
because FAT32 does not support handling large files.
While it is generally recommended to use the NTFS file system
because of its stability, security and lesser defragmentation time,
most of us end up using FAT32 because that is what most disks are
preformatted with.
Microsoft was aware of this scenario, they added a capability in the
command prompt to overcome this by executing a simple command.
Important NOTE:
While this method works perfectly, I would
advise you to
backup your data in case anything goes
wrong.
FAT 32 to NTFS Conversion Steps
1) Go to Computer, and note the name of the drive whose file
system you wish to convert.
2) Click on Start.
3) Type cmd in the search bar if you use Windows 7, Windows 8 or
Windows Vista. If you use Windows XP, click on Run and then
execute cmd.
4) Execute "chkdsk I: /f " (without quotes) where I is the letter of
the drive to undergo conversion. This checks the drive for errors
and fixes them automatically.
5) Execute "Convert I: /FS:NTFS" (without quotes). I is again the
letter of the drive to be converted.
6) The command prompt will start the conversion process and after
a few minutes, CMD will say that conversion was successful.
7) You can check it in the properties of the drive through right
click>Properties.
This works on Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 8 and Windows Vista.
It is interesting to note that this method cannot be used to reconvert
NTFS file system back to FAT32. To reconvert back to FAT32, you
will need to format the entire drive which will definitely cause data
loss.
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