I ran convert.exe on an external usb 200 gig drive to convert to NTFS. It appears to have stopped because I hear no disk activity but the command prompt still just says "converting files". I've left it overnight to make sure it wasn't still working but it appears to have hung. The system still responds but the drive is not accessible and I haven't closed the dos box for fear of corrupting the drive. I have backup data but would rather not have to go that route. Will aborting the Convert.exe process corrupt the drive? What should I do now? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

If you wait, it may complete the task but I doubt it will. I would abort and take a chance at drive corruption IF I had a good abckup set.

How to Use Convert.exe to Convert a Partition to the NTFS File System Says-- It is not possible to convert the boot partition while the operating system is running. ...

Chuck 2, The drive in question is not a boot drive so having the OS running is not an issue. It is an external USB drive.

I'm with badboy. Curious - why did you want to convert external usb 200GB HD to NTFS? I have several external usb HDs (all FAT32)and none ever gave me headaches. i_XpUser

I use my external USB drive to record video which often exceeds the FAT32 4 gig file limit. I wanted to convert to NTFS to eliminate that limitiation.

XPUSER: I like NTFS about as much as I like a hole in the head and wouldn't dream of an NTFS C: drive... but I also have 2 external NTFS drives strictly for video recording... FAT32 just doesn't cut it for recording movies. JTw49: I had a hang problem more than a few times on a USB external. I found that it's simply best to transfer the files off and do a full format in NTFS. Takes a little longer but you don't risk losing the files and a full format is much more trust worthy.