Hard Disk Repair

Q: Is the boot limitation for NTFS still 7.87GB?

A: No. NTFS volume size limit is 2TB.

Q: Where can I get a lot of details about the NTFS encryption and security ?

A: Security (NTFS) and Encryption (NTFS,NTFS5) are wide topics.

You can get a lot of information about it on Microsoft’s MSDN Web Site (http://msdn.microsoft.com)

Security Topics: File Security and Access Rights

Encryption Topics: File Encryption , Encryption, Sparseness, and Reparse Points

Q: How do you lock files from other machine users on NTFS file system ?

A: NTFS has built-in security feature. Owner of the object can assign certain rights to certain users to restrict access to the object.

If file or folder is located on NTFS, just go to its Properties in Windows Explorer and on the Security tab add users being able access the object, and then remove Everyone user from users list, or restrict its rights.

Q: For Windows 2000 Professional using NTFS — Must All partitions be NTFS or can a FAT32 partition be functional as well?

A: Windows 2000 Professional as long as other Windows 2000 and XP family operating systems have full support for FAT32 and FAT16 file systems, as long as CDFS, HPFS, etc.

Operating system communicates with file system via logical level Win32 API that, in turn, redirects function calls to physical level (file system drivers), so if proper file system driver is installed, operating system can access and work with file system properly.

Drivers for NTFS, NTFS5, FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, CDFS are always installed when you install Windows 2000 / XP.
Drivers for NTFS, FAT12, FAT16, CDFS are always installed when you install Windows NT, there is no built-in driver for FAT32 in Windows NT.

Q: How do you format a blank hard disk drive to NTFS or NTFS5 ?

A: There are no standard utilities to format HDD to NTFS from DOS.

However there are solutions:

• Attach HDD to another machine having Windows NT installed if you want to format to NTFS, or to Windows 2000 / XP if you want to format it to NTFS5. Then format drive using Disk Manager utility that is included in OS.
• You can start Windows NT / 2000 / XP installation using bootable CD-ROM. On first steps of installation you will be asked about target location and you will be suggested to format the partition to NTFS. Go this way, and after format is completed, just cancel the installation process.

Q: Is there any problem with my games if I installed it under NTFS filesystem?

A: NTFS file system itself cannot cause problems to any software including games, because NTFS is just a way of data storage.

Software in Windows accesses files via upper-level Win32 API. Win32 API, in turn, redirects function calls to the drivers for the particular file system (NTFS/FAT/CDFS, etc.). Thus software, generally speaking, is not aware of file system it is installed on.

What could cause problems with games is Operating System itself. As long as Windows NT / 2000 / XP are more secure operating systems, and do not support 16-bit device drivers and real mode, some of games that work well under MS-DOS, Windows 95 / 98/ ME might not work under Windows NT / 2000 / XP.

Q: When Data is written to the NTFS disk at what position does in start the write? EG Assuming a file has been deleted (and deleted from the recycle bin if applicable) would it first overwrite this file, or would it start at the next totally unused cluster?

A: It depends on many factors including file system fragmentation, free space, etc.

In most cases it would start with a next totally unused cluster.

Q: When deleting a file at work from a HDD what is the best way to ensure that the file cannot be recovered? ie that the data no longer exists on the drive, rather than just resetting the flag of the relevant file/cluster? Is there any way NTFS will do this? Registry hacks e.t.c?

A: There are no standard mechanisms for this.

Please use third party privacy software (such as Disk Wiper feature in ZDelete) to eliminate unused MFT entries and overwrite clusters containing deleted data.

Q: Is it possible to convert a FAT32 Hard Drive to NTFS without losing all data on the drive? I like to change from FAT32 to NTFS, my operating system is Windows XP PRO, how can I do that? Without the lost of my programs?

A: Standard Windows utility that is called CONVERT serves this purpose

Just go to the Command Prompt and execute the command:

	C:\> CONVERT  C:  /fs:ntfs

Where C: is a name of the drive you want to convert.

After machine re-boot conversion process will start and you’ll have your FAT32 converted to NTFS without of data loss.

Q: How does NTFS compared to FAT32 in Windows XP, and which is faster?

A: NTFS has much more built-in features than FAT, so generally it is a bit slower.

However it depends on many factors such as cluster size, average file size, etc.

For example, NTFS can keep small files inside MFT entry, so if the file size is less than cluster size, most likely it will be accessed much faster on NTFS than on FAT.

Generally speaking the performance of NTFS on large volumes is higher than performance of FAT32. NTFS performance on small volumes is lower than performance of FAT/FAT32.

Q: How can I copy files from a hard drive formatted to NTFS, to a FAT32 hard drive ?

A: You probably asking about Windows NT that does not support FAT32.

There are third party FAT32 drivers for NTFS, or you can use FREE NTFS Reader to copy files in DOS environment. Just make sure that your DOS supports FAT32. You can use Bootable Floppy Creator to prepare such a floppy containing DOS and NTFS Reader for DOS.

Q: Which version of NTFS is installed on my Windows XP system ?

A: The following versions are currently available:

• NTFS v1.2 on Windows NT
• NTFS v3.0 on Windows 2000
• NTFS v3.1 on Windows XP

Q: When I use the following command “FORMAT” on a volume (Windows XP) what is really written on this volume ?

A: Clean Master File Table (MFT) containing some system records is created for the volume.

Q: I am using a 249 megabyte drive as a backup drive on my xp system. I have it formatted in NTFS and compressed, yet the size of the drive is still the same as before I compressed it. Why?

A: Actual disk size cannot be changed. By applying compressed attribute for the volume you just ordered operating system to try to compress any object that will be placed there.

If object that is placed onto the volume can be compressed, operating system compresses it and it takes less space on the drive than uncompressed one. Thus more free space is left on the drive for other data.

Q: The files I place on the compressed drive are only compressed from 1.15MB to 1.14 MB , is it normal this should be only 100kb of compression per MB?

A: Compression on NTFS uses modified LZ77 algorithm. It is very fast but not always effective.

If works pretty well for the files/documents containing a number of repeating sequences of symbols. Example of such files types: text files, RTF, BMP, HTML files, etc…

For other file types, such as binaries, GIF, JPG, ZIP files, etc. this compression algorithm is not useful so that these files might not be compressed at all.

Q: Could I read file from my pc running windows XP with NTFS5 file system, from a machine under windows 95 on the same network?

A: Surely you can do it, if you configure Networking properly, i.e. create Network Share on WinXP for the folder where file is located and assign proper access rights to the share.

After performing these procedures if you can lookup WinXP machine across the Network you’ll be able to see this network share from Windows 95 and access files inside.

Q: Which is better? NTFS or NTFS5?

A: As for advances in technologies the latest versions are usually better than previous ones.

In addition to all NTFS features, NTFS5 has support for Encryption, Disk Quotas, Sparse Files, Reparse Points, Volume Mount Points.