3: Managing and Maintaining Access to Resources

Table of Contents

1. Working with Shared Folders
2. Offline Files
3. Troubleshooting Terminal Services and Remote Desktop Connections
4. Windows Server 2003 File Systems
   1. Converting from FAT or FAT32 to NTFS
   2. NTFS Disk Quotas
   3. NTFS Data Compression
   4. NTFS Data Encryption
   5. Encrypting a File or Folder
   6. Copying and Moving Encrypted Files
   7. Shadow Copies of Shared Folders
   8. Setting Up Shadow Copies
   9. Accessing Shadow Copies
5. Configuring File System Permissions

Converting from FAT or FAT32 to NTFS

Imagine you want to convert drive D from FAT32 to NTFS. From any command prompt, simply type convert d: /fs:ntfs. If drive D is the boot partition (or volume), conversion takes place when the computer gets restarted because many of the operating-system files are locked. This is a one-way procedure and is not reversible.

You can type convert.exe /? to view all the command's options. You can use the /x option to force the target drive volume to dismount before conversion to NTFS. You can use the /NoSecurity option to specify that the files and folders stored on the newly converted NTFS drive volume be accessible to all users.

There is no easy way to convert an NTFS partition (or volume) to a FAT or FAT32 partition (or volume). The only way to convert a volume back to FAT or FAT32 is to use the Disk Management console to reformat the drive. If you want to keep the data, you back it up, then restore the backed up data to the reformatted partition (or volume).

Next: NTFS Disk Quotas