FAT32, NFS and Knoppix

[Alex Koch]

At 03:34 PM 6/24/2004, you wrote:
>I have a friend who will be getting a new computer soon. Her Win 98 box is 
>going to hell - apparently big time MoBo problems.
>The new machine will run Windows Xtreme Prejudice [XP] like all the other 
>computers in her home and graphic design business.
>She wants a Dell; I told her about CyberSource, but she still wants a Dell 
>- go figure.
>
>She wants the files in My Docs and certain subdirectories of Prog Files 
>copied  to the HD of the new box, if possible .
>The 98 HD is FAT32, but I think that XP uses NTFS, and NTFS doesn't seem 
>to interface well with much else [my impression].
>
>My question is this - Could I mount the old  drive in the machine as 
>slave, and boot with Knoppix to copy the aforementioned files to  an XP 
>partition on the master, then have them recognized on the next XP boot ?

WinXP has no problem reading fat & fat32 partitions.  In fact, if you want, 
you can install XP on a fat32 partition, not that I'd recommend it, and the 
existing partition should should be converted to NTFS at some point 
too.  There's a conversion utility with WinXP that will do it (one way to 
NTFS only).  A backup is recommended when you do the conversion anyway, so 
you could just copy the files to the other drive & do a regular format.

AFAIK, NTFS write support in linux is still 'experimental', so you might 
not want to do that.


Alex Koch
ack22 at cornell.edu

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