scratch Posted April 4, 2003 Report Share Posted April 4, 2003 I have just purchased an external Maxtor 5000LE 80 Gig. HD for backup duty. The system is a dual boot Win98, Fat32 file format and a WinXP NTFS format on two separate 40 Gig. drives. I would like to split the 5000LE into two partitions, ("X" & "Y"), with X:\ formatted for Fat32 and Y:\ formatted as NTFS. A Retro. 6.0 prog. would then be mounted on each of the Win98 and WinXP drives and from a dual boot would be backed up to the appropriately formatted X:\ or Y:\ partitions. I realize that file size would have to be kept below 4Gig. for the Fat32 format. The one button feature would not be utilized in this case. Your comments would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your interest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted April 8, 2003 Report Share Posted April 8, 2003 If it was me, I'd run all backups (Win98 and WinXP volumes) from WinXP to a Disk backup set onto an NTFS volume and not do any backups from Win98. It's easier to maintain one system then two, and it's easier to have your backup all in one place. You may want to make more then one backup set in case one becomes corrupt. Redundancy in backup is a necessity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scratch Posted April 9, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 9, 2003 Thanks for the reply, but I was under the impression that if a FAT32 volume was backed up to an NTFS volume, that on restoring back to the FAT32 Volume it was incompatible and could not be read by WIN98. Although the FAT32 files are read by WinXP they become NTFS when copied to the NTFS formatted volume and consequently cannot be changed back to FAT32 when WinXP restores to the Win98 FAT32 volume. Thats a lot to ask of overloaded memory cells that may not have accurately recalled this from a passing perusal, so I would'nt bet the wife's dower rights on it. Your comments would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted April 9, 2003 Report Share Posted April 9, 2003 FAT32 data should be safe going to a NTFS drive and back again. If a file originated on NTFS, it would loose security permissions when moved to FAT32 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scratch Posted April 9, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 9, 2003 Thanks for the excellent advice. I tried bouncing copied files from one volume to another and then retrieving them back again and everything worked out fine.On a related note, I wonder if an iso image file of a FAT32 volume would also work the same way when backed up to an NTFS volume. Would it restore properly to the original FAT32 vol.? It's probably better to burn UDF images to DVD to save a lot of potential problems that seem to follow the FAT32/NTFS incompatibility. I can see the day in the near future when I will be biting the bullet and changing my dual boot 98/XP to all XP. Running the two OSs is a pain in the butt and it won't take much more to switch. It's interesting but most time consuming. Thanks for your advice and patience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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