Win2000 Quick Question

[Deptmaster]

This has nothing to do with divx but i've found the the people that post and read this board are generally well informed.
I'm finally upgrading from crapy 98SE to 2000 prof and I'm going to go the route of a clean upgrade by reformating the partition my OS is on. My question is, If leave the HD partition my files are in alone will i still be able to see them and manipulate them after i install 2k? I just want to make sure because i know 98 & 2k use a different disk format. Thanks.:confused:

[prot0vision]

If your second drive or partition is FAT or FAT32, you'll have no problems.

prot0vision

[da franksta]

Prot0vision is right. Since you used 98se, your partitions will probably be fat32. 2k has no problems reading fat32.

were you to let 2k format your boot partition to ntfs, than W9x would not be able to read this partition. if i understand your question correctly, you won't be using 98 (or any 9x) anymore, so this is not a problem.

you could (if you want) convert your second partition to ntfs without loss of data (always do a backup, no garantees from me :) ). the advantage would be (among others) that you can use larger files (over 4GB). Disadvantage might be that some people say it's a bit slower. i'm not sure whether is true.

to make things more complicated (and interesting!), in w2k you could make your partitions "dynamic", in which case you can stripe partitions on different hard discs and have a software RAID system. there have been reports this can be at least as fast as the hardware equivalent.

Hope i haven't made things more confusing for you.

[Deptmaster]

Thanks for the quick responce I'm really anxious to get rid of 98. I think what i'm going to do is back up everything to my 3rd partition I generally use to hold the unencrypted dvd files then go about the business of repartitioning my C: to give 2k some breathing room and reformating the drive and installing 2k.

[gerti67]

Hi Deptmaster,

believe me, after just one week with Win2k you will never ever go back to Win98 anymore ;).

SCNR,
Gerti67

[Deptmaster]

Man that was a pain in the ass! I made Installing Win2k 50 times more complicated than i needed to and the same goes with trying to get ghost to burn a clean image of Win2k + all the updates and drivers onto a CD from dos.
But Its all done now and I agree that this is diffenatly a huge step up from 98. My only complaint is that i should have done this sooner, the feel and look of the OS makes me think i was coming out of the stone age.