Reformat HDD to NTFS without losing OS recovery partition

[Rahula]

I recently bought a used T23 which comes with no recovery CD, but can be restored to Win2000 Pro from the hidden partition. The problem is that the HDD is formatted in FAT32 and I would like to reformat it to NTFS without losing the Recovery OS in the hidden partition.

Using an external USB enclosure, I put in a new laptop HDD with similar 30 GB 4200 rpm feature to format it into NTFS. Then I used the Apricorn EZ Clone software to clone my T23 HDD. But the new cloned HDD got its NTFS wiped out, and takes the FAT32 from the old HDD instead. (This EZ Clone worked perfectly when I previously cloned a HDD with Win XP for another laptop.) Does Symantec's Ghost clone and yet allow me to change to NTFS?

I do have the retail version of Win 2000 Pro left over from a discard desktop, but I am reluctant to install from this CD as I would lose the proprietary IBM utilities that came with the IBM installed Win2000, such as Access Thinkpad, PC Doctor, etc. - things that I would have great difficulty to seek and download if they are available. BUT, my biggest problem is that, to clean install Win2000 from CD, I would need to use the 4 startup diskettes, and my T23 doesn't have a built-in floppy drive. Can someone who has gone this route before, tell me how to do this. Example, do I slip the FDD and CD rom into the Ultrabay drive alternately when instructed by the installation problem, or should I buy an USB external FDD?

I would appreciate your suggestions. Thanks in advance.

Rahula
[b][/b]

[whizkid]

I you really want to install Windows 2000 from CD, just boot the CD. You don't have to make floppies.

[Rahula]

I took the plunge, formatted the new HDD into NTFS without partitions and then installed Win2000 Pro. Two wierd things happened:
1. The fonts became fuzzy, almost like the font that appears when Windows is in Safe Mode.
2. Screen area allowed max of 800x600 only.

Can anyone who has installed Win2000 Pro with NTSF format on a T23 give some opnion? Also, what implication is there for using NTSF instead of FAT32? Maybe, if there is no big advantage in NTSF over FAT32, then, perhaps, I should just stick with the IBM factory configured Win2000 Pro supplied with the T23

[none]

It's a shame that you already formatted, because there are many great utilities out there, like PartitionMagic, which allow you to CONVERT FAT32 partitions into NTFS partitions without losing any data. What's done is done though...

Your display problem doesn't have to do with NTFS, it just sounds like you are missing your display driver, which is no big deal to fix on a ThinkPad. Go to the drivers and downloads section under Support on the IBM website, and type in your machine model. It should be on the bottom of your ThinkPad, something like "2373-GEU" (that's mine).

The website will give you all the different drivers for it, including the Windows 2000 display driver. Good luck!

[jdhurst]

I certainly agree with none. It doesn't matter about the recovery partition at all. Then once you recover, any NT system can be changed from FAT to NTFS with the convert command. However, you can't go back now.

Any NT system should be NTFS in my opinion. It is more secure and reliable, and does not hinder performance (certainly not that I have ever seen). Like none says, just go to the IBM support site and download all the drivers for your machine for Windows 2000.

[Elhabash]

If you reformat to NTFS instead of converting it, there are supposed to be some performance gains, according to MS. So look at it from the bright side!

[jdhurst]

That's interesting - I have not read that. But IBM preloads come FAT and do the CONVERT as part of the startup process. I have built Windows XP systems from corporate XP CD's and set to NTFS at the beginning. I have not seen any performance differences. Once NTFS and defragged, what would leave to a performance difference between build methodologies?
... JDHurst

[Elhabash]

I don't remember exactly, but it has something to do with the cluster size in NTFS, which can only go up to a certain size when converting.

Check those two links:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;314878
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

[jdhurst]

On a large hard disk, whether you start from scratch or use convert, you will likely land with a 4K cluster as that is the max NTFS can use. So performance on a large hard drive is likely the same for either methodology of install. That is what I concluded from the article, but perhaps I should have interpreted it differently. ... JDHurst