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Converting Fat32 to NTFS after Acronis TrueImage Home 2009 is installed

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I've had Acronis TrueImage Home 2009 installed on my system for about six months. My system consists of two Hard drives. One 500Gb drive with several partitions all formatted as NTFS. It contains the Windows XP SP3 operating system on partition C. In properties>hardware it's locations is shown as 0 (0).

My other harddrive is about 120Gb and is formatted as FAT32. It's properties>hardware location is also shown as 0 (0). The installer told me this was necessary. Regardless, it all works fine, but I am considering converting the 120Gb drive, which contains two partitions, to NTFS using Paragon Hardisk Manager 8.5SE.

If I do this, will I have problems with Acronis TI Home 2009 which is installed on a partition of the 500Gb drive. Paragon shows that the 120Gb drive contains the Acronis Backup Capsule. Will that be damaged, unusable etc. Is there a chance that when I re-boot the system after converting the 120Gb drive that Acronis will not recognise its Backup Capsule.

Perhaps it would be safer to uninstall Acronis, do the conversion and then re-install Acronis?

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Well, for one thing, you can make a full disk backup and then restore it if anything goes wrong. But converting to NTFS should cause any damage. Note that you can't convert in the reverse direction. You could convert the disk using Windows Disk Manager also.

Hello Steven,

I understand the question and will do everything possible from my side to solve the issue.

There will be no issues with Acronis software in case you convert FAT32 to NTFS. In order to convert FAT32 file system to NTFS without data loss using Microsoft convert.exe utility:

1. Click Start, click Programs, and then click Command Prompt

2. At the command prompt, type CONVERT [driveletter]: /FS:NTFS

3. Convert.exe will attempt to convert the partition to NTFS

For information on how to convert FAT disks to NTFS, please see Microsoft TechNet article: How to Convert FAT Disks to NTFS

By Acronis Backup Capsule I suppose you mean Acronis Secure Zone. Is it correct? In order to avoid any malfunctions I would recommend you completely uninstall Acronis Secure Zone before converting FAT32 to NTFS. Check the following KB article for step-by-step instructions.

Let me know if you need further assistance.

Thank you.

Thank you for your prompt and helpful replies.

Yes, Paragon Hard Disk Manager labels the 'Acronis Secure Zone' as the 'Backup Capsule. ACRONIS SZ'. Strange but true!

I will follow your suggestions.

Thanks again,