I have recently gone over to XP and it is suggested that I convert my hard disk to NTFS as it is apparently better than FAT32.Being a cautious guy I am a bit worried that I may cause all sorts of problems to FS2002, so before taking the plunge can any expert out there give me words of advice and wisdom ?ThanksPeter

Hi Peter,The best advice is to back up all your important files/drivers to CD and completely format the hard drive. Do a clean install on Windows XP, and convert the disk to NTFS when prompted. Flight Simulator runs perfectly well on the NTFS file system - and will offer increased stability for Windows XP.

I have converted to NTFS never backed anything up or anything and works perfect not that it's faster or anyhting but I have no problems.However back up is always recomended I just didn't care and went for it worked OK.ANDY

I actually did the upgrade from Win 98 instead of a clean install - and my computer has been steady as a rock. That is what I wanted from XP and it has delivered in spades. Nine months in and no corruption of the registry.

Only caviat I know of with ntfs is that is gets terribly fragmented pretty quickly...and not just the files, but the directory and MTF structures. I'd definitely get a 3rd party defragger like PerfectDisk (I use this exclusively) to keep everything optimized (yes...better than the XP defrag). I recently upgraded and my system (running win2KPro) and in the process switched back to FAT32. Another thing...with a program like PartitionMagic you can set cluster sizes for optimum speed and efficiency, like 16K vs. 4K default. 16K is pretty much as fast as 32K clusters without as much "wasted" space. Just some thoughts.Gino

Thanks Guys for all your help, it is much appreciatesA Very Happy New Year to You allPeter

You can convert without formatting or anything. The Windows XP help documents explain how you can do this with a single command.Simply type in a DOS box:convert c: /fs:ntfs(If your drive is C: )There are a couple of things you should know about NTFS:Once it's converted, you can't accesss the drive from DOS or Win9x/MESome older programs may not work (only had that happen once.)You can't go back to FAT32 again without reformatting. Partition Magic can convert it back to FAT32, but more often than not, it causes files to get corrupted and data to be lost.NTFS is actually supposed to be less sensetive to fragmentation that FAT. I still recommend Perfect Disk or Norton Speed Disk. The standard Windows XP defrag program is not that great.Another big advantage of NTFS is that cluster size doesn't go through the roof on big partitions. What this means in plain english is that there's less disk space wasted, and if you're a power user, you can adjust cluster size to suit your needs.

I have not kept up recently with NTFS utilities, but my understanding was while Norton/Symantec et. al. can frequently repair a FAT32 disk corruption, no chance with NTFS. Has this changed?