Quake3World

I know that fat file systems cannot read NTFS file systems, right?


If I have an older computer with '98 on it and a second hard drive [slave] that is NTFS.....when booted into the '98 disk, I won't be able to read the stuff on the NTFS drive, correct?


If I have 2 hard drives and one is NTFS and one is FAT and I copy the stuff from the NTFS drive to the FAT drive and then take that FAT drive and slave it to the '98 disk, I WILL be able to read the data because it is now on a FAT drive, right?

Doesnt matter that it came from a NTFS drive.....I hope.

I believe FAT can read NTFS files. This is why you can upgrade from FAT to NTFS but you can't go from NTFS to FAT.

FragaGeddon wrote:I believe FAT can read NTFS files. This is why you can upgrade from FAT to NTFS but you can't go from NTFS to FAT.

Put on a dunce cap and stand in the corner......joking.


NO.................... OS's on FAT [32] CANNOT read NTFS.

Yeah I got that wrong.
NTFS can read FAT files but you can't switch from NTFS to FAT without loosing your files.
But going from FAT to NTFS is fine.

FragaGeddon wrote:Yeah I got that wrong.
NTFS can read FAT files but you can't switch from NTFS to FAT without loosing your files.
But going from FAT to NTFS is fine.

put on a dunce cap and stand in the corner............


it's "losing".

You guys (corpse and frag) have your terminology a bit screwed here. Or it feels like it.

Some operating systems can only read FAT16
Some operating systems can only read FAT32
Some operating systems can only read NTFS.

And there's a multitude of operating systems out there that fall somewhere in the middle and can read multiple.

There are also some that can't read them out-of-the-box but can be enhanced to read a new file system.

You have to have an OS capable of reading a file system in order to be able to do anything at all with that file system.

So to answer your question directly:
- 98 doesn't natively support NTFS file systems. It can be hacked on for a quick fix, though. Your mileage may vary: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/N ... ows98.html
- If you copy files from an NTFS disc to a FAT32 disc, you will then be able to see those files on the FAT32 disc on a windows 98 computer. However, you're not going to be able to copy those files off the NTFS disc unless you use an operating system that reads NTFS.
- Not being able to go from NTFS to FAT32 is a limitation on the tools that directly convert hard drives. The main problem this creates is you can't convert an operating system installed on an NTFS drive into running on a FAT32 drive, you'd have to re-install onto a fresh FAT32 drive to accomplish this. But see the point before about just copying files from NTFS to FAT to get any drive without an OS on it to 'convert' ok.

My first point was basically that it's the operating system that reads the file systems. FAT and NTFS are file systems. Hence saying that 'FAT reads NTFS' doesn't make any sense.

I was barely awake when I typed all that out above so apologies if its a bit wishy washy.

My that's a nice pussy you have.

kitt0