Use PM 8.0 to implement lossless conversion from NTFS to FAT

Author: Wang Zhijun Source: Zhongguancun online

With the release of windows XP and Windows Server 2003, many friends chose the NTFS format when installing the operating system, or converted the original FAT32 File System to NTFS by running the convert command after installation, however, it is a pity that the convert command does not support NTFS → FAT reverse conversion. In addition to reinstalling the system, PartionMagic can only be used in most cases to complete this task.

However, since PartionMagic does not actually provide a Simplified Chinese version, all downloaded online are Chinese versions. Therefore, if you convert the NTFS partition in a Windows system in a Chinese environment, therefore, you must change the Chinese file name or folder name to an English name in advance. Otherwise, all characters will be displayed as garbled characters after the conversion. Although the conversion can be restored manually, the operation is quite troublesome.

I. Excellent PPMP Functions

In fact, we can use Paragon Partition Manager's PPMP (Paragon Partition Manager Professional) to achieve lossless conversion of NTFS to FAT, although PPMP does not provide a Simplified Chinese version (Chinese patches can be downloaded from the Internet), users can freely select the language code page to provide excellent support for the simplified Chinese environment. Download the shared version of Paragon Partition Manager from http://www.paragon-gmbh.com/. the latest version is 6.01.333. This is a disk Partition suite similar to PQ Partition Magic. Its main functions include:

1. lossless adjustment of Hard Disk Partition capacity, supports dynamic volume operations.
2. lossless conversion file system, supporting mutual conversion between FAT, FAT32, and NTFS.
3. partition, format, delete, copy, and move a hard disk Allows you to perform operations such as partitioning and even cloning the entire disk.

During the conversion and adjustment process, even if a power failure or crash occurs, data will not be damaged. Of course, we recommend that you back up important data before the operation. The only pity is that PPM does not provide the partition Merge function, but we can delete the partitions to be merged first, and then perform the create operation to merge the curves.

Ii. lossless conversion of NTFS to FAT

To convert NTFS to FAT in PPMP, no complicated operations or setup steps are required. 1. This is the PPMP user interface. We can perform the conversion as follows:

PPMP user interface

Step 2: set the time zone and language

First, we need to set the correct time zone and language code page here, open the "Settings> Locale Info" window from the "General" menu, as shown in 2, set "time (time zone) and Filenames (File Name) are set according to the legend, so that you can support simplified Chinese when converting NTFS to FAT.

The preceding steps are critical. If not set, the Chinese file name will be garbled after the conversion operation is complete.

Time zone and language settings

Step 2: select the source Partition

Observe the different labels in the "System" column and select the NTFS partition to be converted. If you want to convert multiple partitions at the same time, press and hold the Ctrl key to check and then complete the operation, otherwise, there will be a partition loss error after conversion, that is, there will be only one C disk.

Step 2: Switch Settings

Find the "Convert" command in the "Modify" sub-menu from the right-click menu, or select the corresponding command from the "Partition" menu. the dialog box shown in Figure 3 is displayed, here, of course, we select to convert to NTFS. As for the number of sectors in each cluster, we don't need to set it. Just take the default value and click "OK.

Conversion settings

In this case, the program will pop up the dialog box shown in Figure 4 to check whether this operation is performed. If "yes" is selected, the system will be automatically restarted, and a blue screen similar to self-check will be displayed and conversion will begin, we can see the percentage and remaining time. After the conversion is complete, press any key to enter the system. However, if the source partition to be converted is a system partition, You need to restart the system again.

Are you sure you want to perform this operation?

Step 2: Install the missing Partition

It should be noted that if you have multiple NTFS-format partitions that need to be converted to the FAT format, but they are not completed once, for example, the C partition is converted first, and then other partitions are converted, after the conversion, all partitions except the C partition will be lost. Of course, the original data is not really lost, as long as you right-click the required partition in PPMP, select "Create" from the shortcut menu to Create a partition. Do not select the "Format new partition" check box and run the "Mount" command to install the missing partition.

It should be said that PPMP is used to convert NTFS to FAT, which is not only fast, but also the file name and file in simplified Chinese are not changed, and does not affect the normal use of the original software. If you need to create a ppmp dos floppy disk, manually copy the 936. cpi file in the NLS directory of the installation folder to the floppy disk, which is a code page file in simplified Chinese.

Appendix: different file systems

Microsoft uses five different file systems in the DOS/Windows operating systems: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5.0, and earlier versions of DOS 3.0 only support FAT12, A maximum of 8 MB of files are supported. However, the hard disk at that time was a daily price, so this restriction is not inappropriate. DOS and Windows 3.X/ 95 Versions later than 3.0 start to support FAT16, the maximum file size is 2 GB. Since Windows 95 OSR2, the operating system continues to support FAT16 while adding support for FAT32. The FAT32 file system has exceeded the file size limit of 2 GB, you can create a file with a maximum capacity of 4 GB, while Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 supports both FAT16/FAT32/NTFS/NTFS5.0, the maximum file capacity that can be created by the NTFS file system is 64 GB, while that of NTFS5.0 is 2 TB. For Windows NT, only FAT16/NTF is supported. S.