Pelikal

I have an external drive, 232Gb capacity, single partition, formatted FAT32. (I was using this for Mac and Windows file back-up). There is 167Gb of free space on the drive.

I wish to write a Win 7 System Image to this drive but the format needs to be NTFS. Is it possible to create a second partition formatted NTFS on this drive without disturbing the existing FAT32, or is the option for creating two partitions formatted differently only available when formatting from scratch? (I think I'm right that a drive can be formatted this way).

The only tool I have is the standard MS Disk Management. I don't have any spare capacity to write the external data to another drive and reformat the external as I would like it and write the data back to the external.

I believe it is possible to convert the format from FAT32 to NTFS without affecting the data, not sure how reliable this is. I realise I'll lose the Mac usability. Best option is buy another external to use purely for System Images. I suppose I've answered my own question!

The C: drive has about 73 Gb of stuff on it (close to capacity), just wondered how large the System Image is likely to be (to judge how large to make any partitions).

Thanks.

mixture

Peliwotsit,

A few thoughts :

- FAT32 is generally regarded as yuk. Not one of Microsoft's finest moments.

- I've never used it, but a company called Paragon makes something called "NTFS for Mac" which is supposed to do what it says on the tin.

- Have you got spare unformatted space on the drive, or is it all formatted as SPLAT32 ?

- Make sure you've got a backup, but then you're a good boy and doing regular backups anyway aren't you ?


P.S. If you're in the market for a new backup drive, take a look at the Seagate Nearline Archive 8TB, probably the lowest $/GB in the industry at the moment. Not the fastest drive in the world (a mere 5900rpm !) , not to be used as a high-workload day-to-day system drive, the words "nearline archive" in its name hints as to what its designed for (lots of space, cheaply, but maintaining decent reliability). I've only got one so far, but given they're so cheap I'm thinking of buying a few more to replace other older backup disks where I'm running out of capacity.

(Just remember, the Seagte mentioned above is SMR, so DO NOT use in RAID arrays unless you enjoy Russian Roulette)

Bushfiva

Pelikal, there are a bunch of free tools that will let you do this: Easeus, Paragon Partition Manager, Aobai and others all look and function similarly. You can shrink the existing partition to make space at the beginning or the end of the drive, add a new partition and format it as NTFS or whatever you need to do.


If you do feel the need to move away from FAT32, exFAT is a reasonable alternative for both Mac and Windows.

Mike-Bracknell

Every time i've used 'convert' to convert a FAT partition to NTFS it's done the task seamlessly with no loss of data.

Pelikal

Thanks all for replies, I feel I have the info I need regarding the formatting. However, is there any to approximate the System Image size based on the C: drive usage?

Mixture, as regards to Peliwotsit, I guess I'll just have to change my user name.

mixture

The disk space used number perhaps ? Or have I misunderstood your question ?

Well, if you survive your disk repartitioning endeavours, I'll consider granting you permission to change your name to PeliCAN.

Keef

If all your stuff is on Drive C, then a partition a bit larger than the "Used" space on C will be enough... for now.

But I'm with mixturikal about FAT32, and also about the new superlarge backup drives.

If you have more than one hard drive in your system then you may find the System Image software will decide it wants to include some random drives. Mine insists on doing C (correct), I (internet downloads and junk) and S (the hidden anti-burglar backup). It ignores drive D - my documents drive. Everything is backed up weekly onto a series of external drives anyway, so all I want in the System Image is the operating system on drive C. But since it saves to a 2TB external drive, I don't much care

Pelikal

Keef, thanks. mixturikal not sure that's going to go down well...

Keef

50:50 with Peliwotsit, innit.

mixture

Well, I perhaps naively interpreted it as per Keef's later post ... i.e a mashup of Pelikal and Mixture. I thought it was quite good, within the context of this thread.

But if I was wrong, I suggest Keef goes beg his deity of choice for forgiveness.

Pelikal

Job done. I used Minitool Partition Wizard. System Image now on separate partition, NTFS. Other stuff in shrinked partition still FAT32, no bother at this point.

Was just desperate to get a system backup and, touchwood, a repair disc.

Regards to all.

Peliwhotsit.

(and all this on the day when they got the Large Hardon Collider banging ping-pong balls into each other).

mixture

A cautious well done to you Peliwhotsit.

Now we need to find you something more challenging.

Mac the Knife

A few thoughts:

FAT32 isn't a very good file system (as mix says) but because it's so old, pretty much anything can read it (software to back/restore up the vulnerable partition tables can be had for free and and helps a bit). NTFS is a bit better, it just has different failure modes. HFS+ (Apple) is OK, but is getting a bit long in the tooth and just has different failure modes. Same for Ext3, and Ext4 is still not as stable as it should be.

NONE of them prevent bit-rot or ensure data integrity.

I dunno about Paragon NTFS for Mac, but Paragon HFS+ and Paragon ExtFS for Windows work pretty seamlessly - I use Tuxera NTFS Pro to read NTFS for Macs - it is quick and has never given me any trouble.

Yes, there are lots of good apps for resizing HDDs and setting up different filesystems in freed-up parts of the drive - I like EaseUS Partition Master but there are other good (and bad) alternatives. Personally I prefer to have only one filesystem on a single physical drive - it just makes things easier

I really wouldn't buy the sort of huge drive that mix suggests. Yes, it is convenient in a way, but it is a single point of failure and nobody really needs that. Most of the SOHO OSes have problems with drives over 3TB anyway.

Your best and safest and simplest bet is to get a couple of Western Digital Blacks and put 'em in USB3 enclosures (I like NexStar) and use 'em for your backups - one for Windows and one for the Mac.

You wanna be clever, get a big drive as mix suggests, split it into a Windows and and Mac partition and backup your backups to that.

You wanna be cleverer, buy ANOTHER couple of 3TB WD Blacks and another couple of good enclosures and use then to alternate your backups. OSX/Mac is smart, you can tell it to use 2 drives for Time Machine - it'll use number one drive for the first Time Machine image, the number two drive for the 2nd Time Machine image and then back to the number one drive for the next Time Machine image and then the second drive for the third image and so on. You can do the same with Windows but it requires a bit of minor farting around with scripts and cron (I mean PowerShell and Task Scheduler).

And keep spare copies off-site in a secure environment (I use the father/ grandfather/son system)

Finally, consider dropping off most of your local physical junk and using iCloud to backup your Mac and OneDrive to backup your Windows (you DO have all your essential passwords written down twice somewhere findable don't you?) And there are other good services. That's the place we'll all be in a few years in countries with fast cheap broadband connection speeds.

[In my country (South Africa) affordable broadband is horribly slow and the national electricity grid is collapsing, so those who can afford it are falling back onto big batteries/inverters, solar and home generators. I don't know how much longer we'll have our (slow) ADSL before we fall back to POTS and cell-data and eventually (only for the very wealthy elite) satellite only (and it won't be fast)].

Think carefully and you can save yourself some bucks.

And ask yourself just how much your data is worth.

Mac

[now I'll wait for mix to tell me that I have the brains of a mouse, the intelligence of an earthworm and shouldn't even be permitted to ride a tricycle ]

FINALLY, a backup of any kind (particularly a system backup) is not a backup UNTIL it has been tested for REAL to reliably restore onto bare metal from a startup CD and your system drivers.

Yes, I know it's a major drag to test but until you have shown it CAN be done successfully then your backup is likely to be just a reassuring delusion.

mixture

Something along those lines.

Although having (relatively) recently returned from a holiday in Cape Town and had an enjoyable time along the Garden Route, Plett and Tsitsi I was temporarily distracted by the mention of the location alongside your name tag. Give it a couple of weeks, now I'm back in civilisation, normal service will resume .....

I've yet to fully decipher the waffle in your post, but a few tidbits for starters :

Eggs and baskets old chum, no need to teach granny how to suck them either.

The hint was in the latter part of the post to which you refer, namely :

Remember, RAID (or ZFS if you like) is not the panacea either.... its still a SINGLE logical drive, so you still need backups of that too.

I will give you a sheep **** sized brownie point for that one.
I use that trick too.... one of my destination drives is a RAID array on OS X server
You are not limited to two drives either.

Yup, that's good. As is tower of hanoi. As is the simpler "three copies of anything critical (excluding the live copy)"

Yes, your broadband is a turd fest. Fortunately I escaped load-shedding as I was staying in half-decent hotels (not sure if brown envelopes were involved, but the electricity stayed on).


That's all for now Mac the Knife, I might come back in due course and update you with a bigger piece of my mind once I have fully reviewed your ramblings.

Alice_Phoebe

HI,
I just want resize my C: drive and convert FAT to NTFS, where to download the tool? Easeus or Paragon all ok, is it need to pay?

Pelikal

It did occur to me that I'm deluding myself that I have a backup which will work when the time eventually comes.

How can the integrity of a system backup be determined by an ordinary user such as myself? Or is it even possible?

Peliwotsit

mixture

Two words.

Test Restore.

(1) Take Backup Disk
(2) Pick "random" selection of files located on backup disk
(3) Restore said files from backup
(4) Look at files with Mk1 Eyeball
(5) Come to your own conclusions
(6) Rinse and repeat where N = Qty Backup Disks

NEVER use automated processes to check backup integrity. There is no substitute for the human eyeball in fighting stuff like silent corruption or bitrot.

If you want to be really serious about it , you would also store cryptographic hashes of your files on separate storage devices (or even printed on paper). You would then compare the stored hash against the hash of the restored file. This would then give you a guarantee of original and backup being identical, and would also assist when comparing binary files (such as images), where its difficult to review by eye.

Pelikal

mixture, I'm quite used to checking backups of visual material (being ex pre-press) but how can one test if a system backup will actually work? That was my point.

Peliwotsit

mixture

peliwotsit,

how can one test if a system backup will actually work? That was my point.

Yes, well, my point is that you DO NOT waste backup space (or time) backing up operating systems or software.

Verify the important stuff is getting backed up and don't give a toss about anything else.

Capn Bloggs

Buy a reputable backup/imaging program and then do a test restore. I use Acronis True Image. Works well.

Imaging your whole system every night does not "waste time" and with the decent-sized hard drives around, space is not an issue either. Last month I had to restore my whole system because Windows Update stuffed it up. This morning I restored my cousin's computer back to "clean Windows + all programs" (image taken 12 months ago) because of an unsolvable Flash player/IE issue. I transferred the outlook PSTs, Picasa Albums, Desktop Favourites and Documents and we had a "new" system within 30 minutes, and I could have rolled forward to the "bad" image if I had wanted to. That was far better than re-installing Windows, Office and the myriad updates, not to mention drivers.