Direkt zum Inhalt

A FAT32 image to exFAT ok?

Thread needs solution

I have an external drive in FAT32 format and I'd like to reformat it to exFAT. My thinking is to use ATI2016 to:

 -  create an image of the FAT32 drive and store it temporarily on my server

 - reformat the drive to exFAT

 - write the temporarily stored image to the now reformated exFAT drive

Any reason I could not do this? Specifcially, can an image be written to a disk with a different file ststem from the source? ANd does ATI2016 support exFAT? I've not been able to find confirmation of that.

Many thanks for your help!

 

 

 

0 Users found this helpful

As far as I've experienced, Acronis doesn't care what format the drive is for storing images on (or taking images from).  Fat32, exFAT and NTFS can be imaged and/or an image can be written to drives in these formats. 

To be certain though, take a backup of your drive "as is".  You can always restore it to how it is in case you run into any issues. 

The only limitation I'm aware of is when using USB flash drives to create your Acronis recovery media on.  Those must be "removable" flash drives and must be fat32 or the media builder will not recognize them as valid drives for creating the bootable media on.

Removable media settings

 

Many thanks for your help. I'm half way through the process now. I did a ATI backup of drive A (source drive in FAT32), stored that BUP image on drive B, formatted drive A to exFAT, and now doing an ATI restore from B to A.

But I must say I found the ATI user interface very confusing, and I'm not 100% comfortable that it's doing what I want. For example, during the Recover process it told me that the newly formatted (and totally empty) drive A was not empty and was I ok with ATI writing over it? I've said yes, but I'm just hoping it's not reformatting the drive back to the original FAT32.

 

 

Brovig,

The format will be whatever the original image was taken as (when restoring full disk or partitions).  YOu shouldn't need to worry about that.  There are some online video tutorials which may help as well.  Once you've done one or two, you'll be more confident.  Better to test and try now using spare disks if possible so that you feel good with the process and are ready in the event of a real world need to recover.  

117004: Great Acronis "How-To" videos and other Acronis Resources

One note I would like to mention... during RECOVERY, you want to make sure you boot into your recovery media in the same mode as your OS is installed (Legacy or UEFI) for full OS disk or paritoin recoveries.  The reason being, the same limitation you'll find when using the bootable media for Windows installers.  If you boot in legacy mode, it will attempt to work with Legacy/MBR and if you boot into UEFI mode, it will attempt to work with UEFI/GPT mode.  Booting the wrong way will still restore the image, but may convert the disk to the other format and make it unbootable.

BIOS Mode - See if Windows Boot in UEFI or Legacy Mode

 

Screenshot example of one time boot menu with both UEFI and Legacy USB options (F12 for Dell, ESC/F1/or F2 for HP >>> use the one for your particular system and refer to you bios or motherboard manual for instructions).

Hmmm... you say "The format will be whatever the original image was taken as". Perhaps there's some misunderstanding here, but as I outline in my first posting that's precisely what I do NOT want!!

The point of going through this whole exercise is to switch drive A from a FAT32 system to a exFAT system. I am moving the whole content temporarily to another drive (drive B), then formating drive A to exFAT, and then moving the content back to drive A from drive B.

If the content of drive A was simple I wouldn't bother using Acronis. But there are 80gb with a variety of files and folders and I thought it'e be easier to just take an image of the whole drive.

So are you saying I will end up with exactly what I had at the outset? All my files and folders back on a FAT32 drive?

 

 

Is this a bootable OS you're trying to restore?  If it's just data, do a file/folder restore and it wll not mess with the formatting of the drive at all.  If you do a full disk or parition restore, it will format the drive.  It has to in these situations or you'd end up with a nonbootable OS.  For just restoring data, that's all it will restore.

Thanks again for your response! No, it's not a bootable drive. It's an external drive with just data. The backup is already done - it's all contained in a full backup file with TIB extension. I'm not sure what kind of restore I specified and that it's in the process of now doing, but I have a feeling I specified a full disk restore. It'll take another 3 hrs before I know.

Can I do a file/folder restore from that file? Or would I have had do a special kind of backup in order to do that?

In other words, from the backup I've done, do I have the option of doing EITHER a disk restore OR a file/folder restore? If so, I think I'll abandon the current restore process and start again, making sure I specify file/folder.

Yup, during the restore, you should be able to specificy a file/folder restore.  You'll most likely need to go and format the drive as exfat again first though.

 

Thank you! I was able to stop the process and I had indeed selected disk recovery. So I've restarted now with a files/folders process.

Mind you, it very quickly came back and told me there were some files it was not able to restore. The drive is also used by a Mac so I guess it has placed some system files on the drive that ATI doesn't like. I don't think this is a big issue but I will hang on to the bup file so that in the event I need to I *CAN* do a full disk restore later.

Thanks again for your help. Very much appreciated!

And the progress is looking good. Files and folders are showing up on what is now an exFAT drive!

 

But it's going veeery slowly. Much slower than doing the backup. Despite a USB 3.0 connection...

Is a file/folder restore generally a much slower process?

No, I have a feeling it's the write to the USB drive that is slower.  READ is generally faster.  Write is generally slower - check the USB speeds of your drive with the manufacturer and you'll see the difference there.  ALSO... those speeds are "optimal" and generally nowhere close in real life.  Writing large files is much faster, but if you have folders with lots of files, folders-in-folders, etc (like portable apps), it can drop the write speeds waaaaaaaaaaaay down - like much lower than USB 2.0 speeds on a USB 3.0 drive.  I don't think this is related to Acronis, but just writing to the USB flash drive.