NTSF & flopy drive

[Tricky1]

Does NTSF have flopy suport? If not, how do I install RAID drivers. Ive always used FAT32.

[zy]

FAT32 / NTFS is just a file system for the Hard Disk.
it has nothing to do with supporting Floppy.

[Tricky1]

I understand FAT16 was designed for DOS systems that used flopy before we had hard drives & then FAT32 came along to adress problems with larger drives. NTSF was designed for NT, a non DOS O.S. I have read that you cant boot into NTSF from flopy. But are you saying that other than booting from flopy, I can still use flopy with NTSF to load drivers & save small files ?

Thanks.

[zy]

ermm, are you trying to windows XP ?

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by Tricky1

Does NTSF have flopy suport? If not, how do I install RAID drivers. Ive always used FAT32.

Don't confuse yourself with file systems and file system support by different operating systems.

Hard drives can be formatted in a variety of file systems. In Windows-based PCs, that's usually FAT or NTFS. FAT, as you mentioned, have two versions - FAT16 and FAT32.

But these are hard drive file systems. Floppy disks use a slightly different file system, called FAT12. No matter what Windows operating system you use, and no matter what file system you use for your hard drive, your floppy disk will always use FAT12.

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by Tricky1

I understand FAT16 was designed for DOS systems that used flopy before we had hard drives & then FAT32 came along to adress problems with larger drives. NTSF was designed for NT, a non DOS O.S. I have read that you cant boot into NTSF from flopy. But are you saying that other than booting from flopy, I can still use flopy with NTSF to load drivers & save small files ?

Thanks.

It's not so much you cannot access an NTFS partition when you boot using a floppy. The floppy file system has NOTHING to do with your ability to access any file system.

It all depends on the operating system you are booting up with. To access NTFS (or any other file systems for that matter) partitions, the operating system you boot up on, must support NTFS (or that particular file system).

For example, you may install both Windows 98 and Windows XP on a FAT32 partition, with a separate NTFS partition for your data.

When you boot up using Windows 98, you cannot access the NTFS partition. But when you boot up using Windows XP, you can immediately access the NTFS partition, even though you installed Windows XP on a FAT32 partition.

[Tricky1]

So will XP installed on NTFS file structure accept the raid drivers on a FAT12 floppy. Is FAT & NTFS compatible?

[Tricky1]

I guess the big question is, if I format my hard drives for NTFS, and I start XP install, and it comes time to load RAID drivers, will I have any problem loading RAID drivers from the floppy?
Or should I just stay with FAT32?

[zy]

should be a problem...

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by Tricky1

So will XP installed on NTFS file structure accept the raid drivers on a FAT12 floppy. Is FAT & NTFS compatible?

Like I said, no matter whether you are installing XP on an NTFS/FAT-formatted hard drive, the floppy is ALWAYS formatted as FAT12. It's fully supported by Windows since the good old DOS days.

So, yes, Windows XP will read RAID drivers off the floppy. That's why manufacturers provide RAID drivers on the floppy. In fact, it is the ONLY way to load the RAID drivers during Windows XP installation.

Hope that helps you some.