FAT32 vs. NTFS

[oribiasi 0]

Hmm...I have 2 hard drives, one of them (C:\) has WinXP installed on it whereas the other is just a slave where I dump downloaded files onto (D:\) -- now, the C:\ drive is NTFS but the D:\ drive is FAT32 - and every so often when I try to install a patch or something off of D:\ WinXP reboots, giving me no real reason why, but I can't but think that this odd formatting may be the cause...and ideas for fixes? I don't want to format D:\ because I have all of my EVERYTHING on there...including 2000+ mp3s...ugh...

 

Thanks!

[CUViper 0]

I don't see any reason why that would cause problems - does anything show up in the error log when you get those spontaneous reboots?

[oribiasi 0]

That's just it, there is no REAL error log, it just REBOOTS and the screen flashes black and the BIOS appears...

 

Sometimes (although not ALL the time) it asks me to run chkdsk.exe after it boots...it blue screens, but it seems to be a gibberish error, lieke 006213616315313501351...

[CUViper 0]

No, I don't mean a message on the screen.... Open the administrative tools and go to 'Event Viewer'. Look through there and see if you've got any errors logged around the time of reboots...

[oribiasi 0]

Where is this Event Viewer utility?

[CUViper 0]

It's in the 'Administrative Tools' (under Control Panel).

 

Or you can right-click 'My Computer' and go to 'Manage'

[oribiasi 0]

I checked...nothing in there really that has anything to do with hard drive errors or anything of the sort - any other ideas?

 

I will keep looking...thanks.

[pmistry 0]

are they SCSI drives by any chance? maybe there not terminated or something. not much of a SCSI expert myself.

 

Also you may be experiencing power supply issues, or the area where you live is having power problems. thats what happens when you get those reboots. for me anyway.

 

double check your drive cables.

[Dragon-Lord 0]

On my secondary system, my old IBM drive crashes occasionally when Write Cache Enabled is enabled under Windows XP. This can be disabled in the device manager properties for the drive. Once I disabled this option, the drive thrash based crashes went away.

 

This problem does not exist on any other system I have used, so it might be drive rev dependant.

 

Hope it helps,

 

:}

[oribiasi 0]

By not enabling this feature, what am I losing - also, for which drive should I do this too? Both? Is that prudent?

[Dragon-Lord 0]

you want to disable it on the drive you are having problems with only. You are trading data intergrity for a small (I believe) performance boost.

 

:}