GearBits

Reformatting FAT32 Drive with NTFS Leads to Problems

I decided to redeploy an aging 20 GB HDD into a new computer. It had been used for a few years as the boot drive for various installs of Windows, all under FAT32.

Wanting to use the "latest greatest," I decided to just reformat the whole drive as an NTFS partition and go with that. Bad move. The install of Windows XP Pro was incredibly unstable, often locking up and/or rebooting for no obvious reason. Even the initial install of XP didn't go very smoothly...that should have been my first clue.

After unsuccessfully trying three times to install XP SP1, each time leading to a lock-up at some point, I decided enough was enough. I reformatted the entire drive as FAT32 and haven't had a single problem since. If anyone has a clue why this might have happened, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Update: Lock-ups have started to occur under FAT32, so it might be the hard drive. D'oh! Will update if I isolate a cause.

Update #2: Upon much further investigation, it appears that the motherboard is going bad...at least the on-board IDE controller seems to be having semi-regular conniptions. Given its age, it's not worth getting an IDE controller card for it, so now I'm looking at alternatives. Sorry for the false alarm...just call me Chicken Little.