Converting old FAT disks to NTFS partitions

There are several advantages in using NTFS partition disks - one of them is faster data writing/retrievement.

However, many storage disks on the market (e.g. thumb drive, hard disk drive) are formatted as File Allocation Table (FAT) file systems, the main reason is because Windows 98 and older do not support NTFS.

It's very easy to identify which type your disk is - just right-click your disk in My Computer and click on Properties.

If it's FAT, no matter FAT16 or FAT32, you can convert it to NTFS if you're sure you won't use it on old operating systems that do not support the NTFS file system.

Assuming that you are a Windows XP or Vista user (my instructions are for XP, I don't know about Vista), you can convert disks (especially thumb drives) to NTFS without losing your files (it's safer to backup though) via the command prompt, but you will have to reformat your disk if you want to change it back to FAT.

I'll post step-by-step instructions on how to do it, and pictures will be below most steps.

1) Click on the Start menu, and click on "Run".

2) Type in "command".



3) A black window should appear, as follows.



4) Type in "help convert".



5) Information regarding the "convert" command will correspond.



6) We want to convert the disk to NTFS, so type in "convert drive alphabet: /fs:ntfs" as shown below (my thumb drive is in Drive E:)



7) A long line of text should follow. You may want to resize the Command Prompt window. If correctly done, you should see "Conversion complete" at the last line.



8) Now exit Command Prompt by typing in "exit".



And you're done! The disk you converted should now be NTFS.