Partition Magic - can't live without it :-lol I will need to increase my USA Scenery partition by about 12GB soon when Megascenery 4 arrives...Another really cool feature about NTFS is that you can actually mount a partition inside a folder so you could in theory have FS9 and your aircraft on separate harddrives if you want. Just mount the partition of the second harddrive into the aircraft folder.But I do have a pretty good idea of how much space I need for various things so I can do some planning ahead. Of course sometimes the estimate is completely wrong and I have to spend a whole day resizing partitions :-lol

>Partition Magic - can't live without it :-lol I will need to>increase my USA Scenery partition by about 12GB soon when>Megascenery 4 arrives...>>Another really cool feature about NTFS is that you can>actually mount a partition inside a folder so you could in>theory have FS9 and your aircraft on separate harddrives if>you want. Just mount the partition of the second harddrive>into the aircraft folder.>>But I do have a pretty good idea of how much space I need for>various things so I can do some planning ahead. Of course>sometimes the estimate is completely wrong and I have to spend>a whole day resizing partitions :-lolThat mount a partition inside a folder part I don

Read it on some tweak site. Basically you go:Control Panel - Performance and Maintainance - Administration Tools - Computer ManagementThen click Disk Management. Right-click the partition and choose the option to change drive letter and path. Click Add and browse to the folder. You can also remove the drive letter if you don't want it.This should be done to an empty folder so you'll need to temporarily move everything out of the folder before mounting the new partition there.

Okay so I simply just reformat. Create 2 partitions say they are named C and D.Then I install fs9 on C. Then create a dummy fs9/aircraft folder on partition D. And then in the disk management (have been there before but not noticed this option). How do you tell it to read as c:microsoftfs9aircraft instead of reading it from like partition D? If I erase the drive letter do it automatically assume it

You don't need to create any folders on D:Just move the contents out of the FS9aircraft folder on C (if you don't you'll probably loose the entire aircraft folder), then in disk manager, right click the D: partition and choose to mount it in the aircraft folder on C. The aircraft folder on C will now actually point to the D: partition. In the same box, you can remove the D: reference if you don't want it, but keeping it won't cause any problems.

Okay I see.install fs9 as normal. Then point aircraft folder to D.After that copy the aircraft folder to my D partition and delete the one on C?

I've been using SCSI systems since the Atari days.(that old!!).I have 3 drives(36,36,18gigs). Each one with 2 partitions.In addtion to organizing, backup, extra bootability(I can boot up with any of the drives anytime) smaller partitions save space when using FAT32. Of course with the prices of the drives going down, the saving of space is not terribly important any more.I also have 2 120-gig external Firewire hard drives, mostly for backup. Both are NOT partitioned.Abe

May I ask why you use FAT32?

I use FAT 32 for a couple of reasons.First off that's how I had my system set up to begin with and secondly, I left it because of compatability with DOS (yeah DOS, just in case). My external drives are NTFS.If you can convince me that NTFS is better in many ways, I'll switch.Thanks.Abe

Well it

Thanks P

I have only three partitions on two physical hard drives and ALL are formatted to NTFS - Windows XP really needs NTFS to do itself justice.Another advantage of partitioning and NTFS is the ability to set cluster sizes to suit the software on any given partition - I use a lot of music software and large cluster sizes give a very useful performance boost, at a `cost` of a certain amount of disk space wastage. It also makes defragmenting the hard drive quicker. It is not recommended for everyday users though!If you use Partition Magic you can set cluster sizes very easily and it is worth experimenting with different sizes on your rig to see if FS can gain from using larger clusters - I use 4k as the FS hard drive is not a dedicated sim section, but also contains other software. YMMV.All of this can only be achieved with NTFS... as good a reason for going away from FAT32 as you'll find. Allcott

Thanks Allcott,You got me conviced!Now, what is the easiest and safest way to convert FAT32 to NTFS?I am using XP Professional. Would appreciate some help.Thanks.Abe

Hi, Jerry.Partition.1- About 10 for the OS, if XP.2- The same size as above for the OS Partition back up, use Ghost WD utils., etc.3- Remaining for your installations Apps Utils, etc. I run at least 4 partitions in my drives above 160 GB, the advantages are too many to get into here, but you can search for "Avcomware" and see some of my reasons that I recommend this. TV