I bought a external HD and did not format it. It copies files and partitions 2 and from my puter. ?

Question

On rebooting my puter insisted on doing a check on the external HD. It listed the drive as FAT32 format which contrast with my NTFS format on my puter. I did not think it was possible 2 transfer data from different formats. When my puter identified the external HD as FAT32 could it be right.

Answer 1

You should have no problem with your external HD being Fat32.  As was said above, you can transfer to Fat32 from NTFS, and vice-versa.

NTFS is a better format than Fat32, it utilizes space better on the drive.  When the transfer is made between the two formats, it's just the way the information is stored on the drive that is different... the data is still the same.

Most people know that data consists of 0's and 1's, and that data is stored the same way on both formats, as 0'ss and 1's.  When programs say that they cannot be installed on a system running XP or Vista, only on Win 95, 98, or 98SE, it is just configured for that particular OS, thus it will not run on XP or Vista. (very simple way to say it, and it is not exactly correct, but it gives you the idea)

IOW, your computer is most likely right, I'd say it is at least 99.9% right, unless your computer is made by 3 year olds. =)

Answer 2

Yes and it does not matter. you can copy files from NTFS to fat, fat to NTFS, on systems other than Windows you can copy files from Linux/Unix/MAC/HPFS/OS2 to and form each other and any type of Windows file system. Windows is limited to its' own systems.