I have a hard drive 40GB FAT32 in my C:\ drive with W2K Pro, also an external hard drive in my E:\drive 40GB FAT32. I backup from C:\ to E:\ with Windows provided Backup utility. I would like to convert the external hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS. My questions: 1.- Would it be OK to format the external hard drive first and then convert to NTFS? 2.-If yes, can I backup from C:\FAT32 to E:\NTFS? 3.- If yes, will there be a problem restoring from NTFS to FAT32? 4.- If needed, can I convert the C:\drive with all data and OS in, from FAT32 to NTFS? 5.- If yes, are there going to be consequences like lost or corrupted files, etc.? Help will be very much appreciated.

If the only OS you're using is Windows 2000 or newer, convert them. If you use that external drive with say... Windows 98, leave it as FAT. You shouldn't have any problems converting the drives, and it doesn't matter which order you convert them in. And you can backup data from one to the other and vice versa. The only thing FAT won't keep are the security settings, but that doesn't sound like a big issue for you from your post. Hope that answered all the questions... Oh, maybe run a Disk Check on the drive before converting it, to find any errors before they might cause problems...