Shoutbox

The Don: Microsoft's KB seems to make it sound pretty easy. You'll always have a chance of ruining everything, but heck, you could have that same problem by hitting the power button. Just go out and buy a pack of CD-Rs or DVD-Rs and back up your important stuff, then do it. Worse case scenario is that you lose all your data and have to recover it from CD/DVD. Just depends on how much it's worth to you to have your files "Hidden".

Cookie: I personally don't like Partition Magic, it doesn't play nice if you have multiple partitions, Always seems to mess up my MBR. I think the best option here is to A) do nothing, or B) use the windows tool to just convert the drive.

Seeing as Fat32 doesn't natively support security features like NTFS does, there ARE third part tools, however they will slow down certain things and have to run on startup on all accounts etc. Definately worth it to use NTFS anyway as it's just a better FS all in all and you can benefit from the other features it offers.

YOU CAN make your folders private on Fat32

theres a whole range of hidden options including hiding files owned by other users

its just to much issue for some

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Originally posted by DXtremz
Cookie: I personally don't like Partition Magic, it doesn't play nice if you have multiple partitions, Always seems to mess up my MBR. I think the best option here is to A) do nothing, or B) use the windows tool to just convert the drive.

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PM is among the most powerfull and professional tools there are for such things. It never messed anything up for me (and I have used it heavly in the past) and is a very decent tool if you need to do more then the basic supported stuff in Windows (though for just converting to NFTS it is indeed not needed as Windows can do it also).

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Originally posted by squall_leonhart69r
YOU CAN make your folders private on Fat32. Theres a whole range of hidden options including hiding files owned by other users. It's just to much issue for some

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although you can hide stuff, you can't totaly secure stuff with FAT32. The benefit of NTFS over FAT32 is that NFTS supports real physical encryption of data, with FAT32 the best you can do, nativly, is to hide stuff, which in the end can still be found if you know how (heck, it isn't that hard to find out how though).

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Originally posted by The Don
Thanks cookie but like I was telling Dx on msn im a total n00b and even if i read carefully i would probally still mess something up.

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It's really simple to convert from fat32 to ntfs:
convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs (as explained on the page DX linked to)

So if you want to convert C: drive to ntfs:
start > run > type: convert C: /fs:ntfs

D: would be: convert D: /fs:ntfs

etc.

You won't loose anything (i know so, i've done it that way too in the past).

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Originally posted by cookieRevised
PM is among the most powerfull and professional tools there are for such things. It never messed anything up for me (and I have used it heavly in the past) and is a very decent tool if you need to do more then the basic supported stuff in Windows

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I agree there, i use PM too for resizing partitions (often C: needs more space). It never messed up, you just gotta let it do it's work and not interfere. You can always make backups first just incase.

eh... i've been encrypting stuff in fat32 for a good long time

i've also been securing my user accounts with passwords

guest account on most setups isn't actually a guest account

you can access alot with the guest account

you need to manually lower the guest accounts access level to certain folders and with fat32 you can do this by preventing guest access to folders within a certain group

in my case the guest account can only access the all users folder and some games

And how did you make it to where the guest can only access the all users folder

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Originally posted by squall_leonhart69r
eh... i've been encrypting stuff in fat32 for a good long time

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Encryption?! You've got to be kidding me. There is no form of data encrytion in fat32 or NTFS natively. NTFS5 however (Windows 2k/XP) supports encryption of files. For other file systems you need an external program.

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Originally posted by squall_leonhart69r
guest account on most setups isn't actually a guest account

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Actually I think you'll find it's a Windows Restricted/Limited user account and if you ARE using NTFS you WILL have the permissions setup so the guest cannot access other directories in which they can't.

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Originally posted by squall_leonhart69r
you need to manually lower the guest accounts access level to certain folders and with fat32 you can do this by preventing guest access to folders within a certain group

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Sorry to put a boot up your ass, but Fat32 doesn't suppot object permissions. Therefore anyone can access anything they like.

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Originally posted by The Don
And how did you make it to where the guest can only access the all users folder

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If using NTFS navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\. Right click on the All Users folder , Properties, then the Security tab. Add Guests to the list of groups/users and allow read/write access. However guests should already have access to this folder by default.

thats odd, becoz fat32 has the same restrictions as ntfs when set right

its kind of like sharing objects over a network

where you can share a folder without sharing the entire drive

i recreated the guest account so it can only access certain folders

although i guess alot of you don't have User2 in the control panel

which allows for a more advanced setup of user accounts

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Originally posted by squall_leonhart69r
thats odd, becoz fat32 has the same restrictions as ntfs when set right
its kind of like sharing objects over a network
where you can share a folder without sharing the entire drive
i recreated the guest account so it can only access certain folders

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simply boot from another disk (eg: a floppy) and go to this "protected" hard disk and you'll be able to do everything you want and access anything you want....

The only pitfall of converting a FAT32 drive over to NTFS instead of reformatting the drive is that you lose speed.

I've noticed this many times when i've done it, in the long run its better to save your data to dvd's (or network computer) and do a full format (not quick format) of NTFS.