ME to 2K?

[mrtj]

is it possible to update ME to 2K? or is it better to do a fresh install (well i know it would but i really don't want to )

also, should i be worried about my other hard disks? a friend of mine installed ME on one partition and it tried to do something to his other drives/partitions and screwed up one of his linux partitions. i don't have linux only ME, but i have a lot of data on my other 3 hard disks and dont want to lose anything in case 2k tries to format/convert to ntfs etc the other drives.

finally, if i dont like 2k, can i put ME back on with a ghost backup? i've heard people say you cant get rid of 2k entirely without doing a low level format and stuff. would just putting my ghost backup of ME be fine?

 

[igottaknife]

Ghosting would reformat and partition the drive if I remember correctly, so you should have no problemm going back. You can install Win2k if you opt to use FAT32, but NTFS I think is more stable. Win2k is just better than ME, one thing you'll find though is that most older scanners and digital cameras might not work with win2k.

Your Signature Sucks

 

[Toejam31]

*is it possible to update ME to 2K? or is it better to do a fresh install (well i know it would but i really don't want to )*

Answer: NO. You will have to do a fresh installation on a formatted partition. Windows 2000 Pro is not an upgrade for WinME, not by any stretch of the imagination.

*also, should i be worried about my other hard disks? a friend of mine installed ME on one partition and it tried to do something to his other drives/partitions and screwed up one of his linux partitions. i don't have linux only ME, but i have a lot of data on my other 3 hard disks and dont want to lose anything in case 2k tries to format/convert to ntfs etc the other drives.*

Answer: NO. Windows is only installed in one partition, on one hard drive at a time. This is not like managing multiple operating systems on different partitions. If you install Windows 2000 in the default C:\WINNT folder, there's no reason to think that it will affect another hard drive. But what you should remember, if you have more than one partition on the drive, is to only format the partition that currently contains WinME.

Win2K will not convert your FAT 32 file system to NTFS unless you tell it to during the installation. And even if you did, unless there is something very wrong with one of the drives, your data should remain intact.

*finally, if i dont like 2k, can i put ME back on with a ghost backup? i've heard people say you cant get rid of 2k entirely without doing a low level format and stuff. would just putting my ghost backup of ME be fine?*

Answer: YES. You can re-image the drive with Ghost. Most utilities of this kind state in the manual that the drive will be formatted in preparation for placing the image back on the drive. What you CAN'T do is convert the drive from FAT 32 to NTFS and back to FAT 32. That can physically damage the drive, and even low-level formatting will not fix the problems that can arise as a result of this. In fact, for your information, modern hard drives are low-level formatted at the factory, and it is recommended that it never be done again ... unlike older drives that actually needed this done periodically due to "drift".

Would you consider taking some advice? It sounds to me like you are not really an advanced user, considering the content of your questions. Because of that, I suspect that running Win2K might be difficult for you, due to your lack of experience. Windows 2000 was not created with home users in mind, but meant for corporate desktops, and as such, is completely different from Win9x in some respects. It also has a higher learning curve, and can take quite a bit of adjustment if you are switching from a consumer operating system.

Because of this, I would suggest that you get with your friend and consider placing Win2K on a separate partition, as a dual-boot, instead of just replacing WinME. This will give you some time that you can use to examine Win2K, figure out how it works, and still have an operating system that you can use that is more familiar.

Also, if you like to play games, in most respects, Win9x is still the best operating system for 3D applications. It tends to have a 10% to 15% speed advantage for these types of programs, and is backwards-compatible for older games; this is an ongoing issue for Microsoft as more people are beginning to use Win2K at home.

Actually, if you want the best of both worlds ... just hang on to what you have, and wait until October when WinXP will be released. It will have the backwards-compatibility of Win9X, and the NT kernel for stability. Then you won't have to deal with NTFS vs FAT 32, dual-booting, or anything else. In fact, WinXP is the natural upgrade for both operating systems.

Final thought: If it ain't broke ... don't fix it. Nothing could be more apt than this, when it comes to computers. I make my living fixing machines other people have attempted to improve, "clean", or tweak, in one way or another. Thanks, everybody, for paying for MY new computer!

Toejam31


<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[mrtj]

thanks for all the info. i don't really want to dual boot since my c drive is pretty small (2 gig) and there wouldn't be much space left for the swap file.

i want to go to 2k because i capture and hate splitting files after 4 gigs, and also i have to restart my machine to get it 'fresh' before doing a new cap so i won't lose frames. i use win2k at work and no problems if it has been on for a week at a time or more. i also am planning to buy more ram and don't want the 512 mb problem that comes with ME.

i was thinking of trying the beta of XP but never got around to it, i may do that (after making a ghost image) just to see how it looks since i've heard some interesting things about it.

i am not sure about buying a copy in oct tho. is it worth risking it? win95 wasnt decent till ver2 and 98 till SE and i heard the same for 2k so i may leave xp till the 2nd edition.

 

[blah]

>>What you CAN'T do is convert the drive from <b> FAT 32 to NTFS and back to FAT 32</b>. That can physically damage the drive, and even low-level formatting will not fix the problems that can arise as a result of this<<

What are you talking about and putting the guy into some kind of confusion. FAT32 to NTFS can be done in Win2k by just by clicking couple of icons. As far and going back to FAT32, I have done it so many times, I don’t have so many fingers on my hands to count. Just delete the partition, recreate it and format with any file system you wish (I use Partition Magic if I want to, which does any file system by the way). No <b>damage </b>, no nothing, just plain low format with Win98SE boot disk for FAT32 and Window 2k for NTFS (I do it almost every other week or so (playing with XP, NTFS by the way)), so don’t give any restrictions to people what they can and can’t do, bad business, if you please.

Have fun.


Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[blah]

>>i was thinking of trying the beta of XP but never got around to it, i may do that <<

Win XP will eat yer 2 gigs drive alive, just for the initial install it takes more than a gig of the drive space.
So don’t even think about installing office and couple more apps onto that drive with XP. Bad idea. As far as risking buying the thing, you can if you have proper hardware. It is really nice OS, but it is so fragile, you want believe your eyes once you'll do something "stupid" to it. I have killed Advanced Server just by installing video driver which was not "certified" by MS and is perfectly working with Win2k (here you go campotaboollity), it was dead, blue screen, no recovery, no nothing. But when it works, it works like a dream. Anyway, have fun. You'll learn more by playing with stuff.


Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[Toejam31]

I'm sorry ... but I have to disagree with you on this issue. I've had several people come into the shop over the past year, and after attempting to convert a NTFS formatted disk back to FAT 32, the drives were dead. SCSI disks seem particularly susceptible to this kind of problem, from what I have seen. I had one customer kill two of them on the same machine. The only thing that he did was the conversion. He ran into a problem where the SCSI controller could not seem to recognize the drives, and reformatted them as FAT 32, thinking that this might be the "cure". It wasn't, it didn't, and two brand-new drives were destroyed. And no ... this guy wasn't a newbie; he is a former COBALT programmer who has forgotten more about computers than most people ever learn.

I have recently seen warnings about this ... tonight, I'll attempt to find the information online, and post a link.

I don't post information to confuse people. I stay up-to-date, and mention problematic events as I see them, in order to inform other people before they do something to their systems that might end up being time-consuming, and/or costly.

I'm not the only repair technician who is warning people to avoid converting NTFS partitions to FAT 32. And for advanced users, who might feel the need to low-level format a disk, I also try to explain that this is not the 80's, and new hard drives don't need low-level formatting anymore once it has been done at the factory ... and that this can actually void the warranty on the disk. As well as render it useless. Again, SCSI disks are particularly susceptible to damage from this kind of formatting. You might get away with low-level formatting once or twice, but it WILL damage a modern hard drive. I have done testing before and after, and seen the burst rate cut in half afterwards. We are no longer running five pound, 300MB hard drives that have problems such as data gradually drifting to the edge of the platters. Those days are gone.

This is not the same thing as simply running a FORMAT command at the prompt with a Boot Disk.

To be honest, at first, it never occurred to me that there might be a problem with converting a disk to a NTFS file system from FAT 32. I had to see several dead drives before I finally realized that a FAT 32 to NTFS to FAT 32 conversion could cause actual physical damage to the drive. It surprised the hell out of me. I've even done it myself, and although it took the disk a few months to finally die ... when it did, there was no warning. No noise, no loss of data, no identifiable bad sectors ... it just quit. That made a believer out of me in a hurry. Perhaps you have simply been lucky so far. But I can say with authority that IBM SCSI Ultra160 drives do not like the conversion.

As for "confusion", I am aware that a disk can be converted to NTFS from within Windows. Where in my post did I seem vague about that? The guy I was writing to seemed to be under the impression that during the installation he might have no choice but to allow the disks to be formatted as NTFS ... which he thought might cause him to lose his data. Which, of course, is not the case. I myself, on my home system, am running Win2K with FAT 32, simply because certain utilities function better with this file system, such as Norton SystemWorks 2001.

That's the facts.

I'll find those links to that information for you, so you can see for yourself. I WILL post them here. That's good business. As for "restrictions" ... some people need working guidelines, or they can get into trouble from no fault of their own, due to simple ignorance, or a lack of experience. That's why you tell folks that they shouldn't delete system files because they have strange file names ... why grounding yourself is smart when you open the can and start playing around, etc. Without some basic knowledge of why and how, including what NOT to do, a person can easily spend a large wad of cash attempting to keep a computer up and running. Personally, I'd rather that people pay me for fixing real hardware problems, instead of repairing a machine that is nonfunctional due to user error. That's the entire reason I even bother posting in forums like this, especially after working on systems all day. It's my job ... it's what I do.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's morning, and I've got a motherboard to install before the phone starts ringing off-the-hook.

Toejam31





<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[Toejam31]

You should get yourself a new hard drive! 2GB's is pretty small, especially if you are working with really large files.

You are right ... often operating systems are relatively unstable with the first release and need the bug fixes that come with the first service pack. As for Win2K ... that would have been the second service pack, just like it was the second edition of Win98. Of course, after seeing SP2, I can see that it is already time for SP3! No new features to speak of, and lousy support for software firewalls and optical mice.

So maybe somewhere around the summer or fall of 2002, WinXP will be ready for actual use!

In that case, as I said previously, get yourself a decent hard drive, and install Win2K, or dual-boot. If you already know how to use it, then you should have no problems. Personally, I think WinME is a mess by comparison, and I would never use anything but Win2K or Red Hat Linux on my home machine. WinME has the worst non-Plug-and-Play driver database that Microsoft has released since Win3.1. I actually had to reinstall the OS after a customer removed a dysfunctional dialup adapter from the Device Manager. There was no other way to reinstall it. And that's just one of my many complaints about that particular Operating System. I'd rather not install it on a new machine. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't giving vendors, or people like me much choice in the matter.

Have you considered dual-booting with Win98SE and Win2K? Or even installing a beta of XP + Win2K? That could be interesting.

Toejam31

<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[Toejam31]

I'm going to clarify my own post, before somebody else does!

You can't convert a NTFS PARTITION to FAT 32. You must format the partition. That comes straight from the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q211/2/49.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Fat32&rnk=5&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000" target="_new">http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q211/2/49.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Fat32&rnk=5&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000</A>

However, this does not change the fact that I have seen hard drives fail even after removing the active partition, creating a new one, and reformatting the partition as FAT 32. I've seen it take as much as two months before the drive failed, but I've also watched it happen almost immediately.

Why? I have no idea. Until I saw it happen, I wouldn't have believed it, myself. Has anyone else observed a problem of this nature? Additional information on this subject would be appreciated.

Toejam31

<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[blah]

Oh, oh, oh, how sensitive we are. Hehehe, anyway, it might be your own experience (actually it was a conclusion of what happened, not the actual fact) with drives (?), but I don’t recall anything in my (own) life that could cause motor (the thing that just spins the disks) of the harddrive quit working just because partition table or file system (information written not welded) on the plates was changed. That is the most weirdestest thing I have ever heard. I have being working with Windows 2000 and XP for about a year and all we did was installations on any configuration we could think of on hundreds of machines. There was not even one harddrive failure because of changing file systems on them. None, ever: SCSI, IDE… did not matter. I think your supper-poopper knowledge base puts you down on this one. If the tire on the car goes flat and I have changed it, it does not take the engine with it. Deal with it anyhow you wish.

I had complete partition tables corruptions, file system corruptions, but never actual physical damage to the drive itself because of that. All was fixed (even all data was lost), but drives were alive and spinning as they were before.

Well, anyway, I might be very wrong on this issue (just because it never happened with me, it does not mean that it is not true, rght ) I think your shop needs a guy like myself to troubleshoot and fix stuff )

Have fun.

PS: by the way, low format is the best thing for the harddrive to clean it up; it is like second birth to it. All the harddrives I have bought were un-partitioned and un-formatted, so I had to do it, don’t know anything about preformatted drives, maybe the newest ones do have it (I had new GXP60 40 gig one that had 20 gigs partition with FAT32, the other half of the drive was not partitioned at all), but all other I had did not have anything on them.

Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[blah]

Hey, thanks for the link, there is another <A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q100/1/08.ASP" target="_new">one</A> and <A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/" target="_new"> two</A> which explains more about differences between file systems. Old ones, but interesting.

Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[Toejam31]

Me, sensitive? LOL! Not really. I just want to make sure that anything I post has an accurate basis in fact. Normally when I discuss something on a forum, some so-called expert with a vague understanding of hardware tends to come along and nitpick to death whatever I've written ... which completely eclipses the reason I was posting in the first place ... which was to help someone. If it happens often enough, you'd be careful, too. If that makes me sensitive, I guess I should start collecting floral ties. ;-)

Since I'm here, let's go over a couple of things.

First, the "damage" I mentioned was in reference to the disk surface of the hard drive, not the drive motor. This is called a "Hard Error". Using your anology, if I'm driving my car, and it throws a rod, it's going to require either a major overhaul to repair it, or I'll have to buy a new engine. Either way, the car isn't going to be moving under its own power again, not anytime soon ... and certainly not without a tow truck.

I don't know anything about pre-formatted drives, either, because they don't exist to my knowledge ... not straight from the manufacturer. At least, not in the way that you mentioned.

There are two types of formatting. Physical or Low-Level Formatting, and DOS Formatting.

When a hard drive is first manufactured, it has only tracks and cylinders, no sectors. Low-Level Formatting is a process whereby the sectors are "drawn" on each track, using magnetism as the "ink". This process also writes out the sector ID's that will be used by the operating system to locate data on the disk.

Since this kind of formatting is usually done by the manufacturer, unless you have been working with hardware for several years (say, like a decade or more), it's unlikely that you, and/or the majority of users have ever done a Low-Level Format. When EIDE drives came on the scene, the reliability of the drives went up considerably, and Low-Level Formatting became an antiquated, and usually unnecessary process after being done once, at the factory. In these days, with DOS being phased out, the only time I've seen the this kind of program in recent years was in a SCSI BIOS utilities package.

There was a time when it was recommended that a hard drive be Low-Level Formatted about once a year, especially when the drive and the controller were separate components, such as with an ESDI system.

You would use this to refresh the sector ID's on the disk, and to change the interleave factor, if necessary.

The process, when done by a home user, was usually performed with a DOS program like DEBUG, DM or HFORMAT.

The ordinary DOS FORMAT command is not the same, and performs a different function.

This command creates the Master Boot Record, which contains the partition information to the divide the physical drive into logical drives. It also creates the DOS boot record, and the File Allocation Table, which is a map of what clusters are associated with what files.

Finally, it creates the the root directory, which is the basis of the tree-structured file system, and the Data Area, where the actual user data goes.

This command does not touch the MBR or the user data area, which is why a formatted hard drive can often be recovered if no program has overwritten the data area.

That's the difference between the two. I hope this makes what I have previously written a little easier to understand.

I appreciate the offer to go to work at my shop, but since I'm the owner (and the hardware troubleshooter) ... you won't mind if I say no, right? I need my job! <GRIN>

Toejam31



<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[blah]

Wow, that's a lot of information for me te carry at once about the formatting the drives, that was a good educational reading.

As far as damage goes, next time be a little more specific about what kind of it, so there will not be a confusion between "fighting" parties. For from what I have read you have said that drives were dead, deader that dead, no go. I understand if there is no go, then there is no go. It is DEAD, no noise, not spinning, blah blah blah.

PS: by the way, I did not offer myself to your shop, I just mentioned it would be a good thing to have someone kinda like me in there to help you out, but now I can see you yourself are more than your shop needs )

Have fun, hehehe.


Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[Toejam31]

You are correct ... I should make an effort to be more specific when I write. (That's what I get for writing in the middle of the night.) Although you might have noticed that I'm already kinda long-winded, so the end result might be painful for some people! LOL!

One last thing. If the platters are damaged, for whatever the reason, as far as I'm concerned, the drive is dead. If you can't access it, low-level format it, or boot with it, and it can't be recognized by a controller or by the BIOS ... it's usually beyond help.

I'm probably more than any shop needs ... God help us all! <GRIN> But you'd be glad to have me around if something went down; my prices are reasonable and I refuse to cut corners.

Well ... that's enough for me and my endless blather!

Toejam31

<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[blah]

>>my prices are reasonable and I refuse to cut corners<<

Good help always needed, so I'll keep that im mind, hehe

Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[mrtj]

to toejam. my 2 gig is my c drive. i use that so i only install essentials on it and it is easier to back up with ghost. my other hard disks are 2x30 gigs and an 82 gig maxtor for capturing.

i think i will leave xp till it comes out, but make a backup before installing. i will probably put my 30 gig ibm as my c drive before then anyway. since i need the ide ports free if i am going to buy another 80 gig drive for a raid system.

also one person said something about xp needing a decent system. i think mine is (in my opinion)

1ghz athlon (not o/c) probably move to a 1.4 sooner or later.
kt7-raid
384 ram + another 512 when i move on from ME

 

[Toejam31]

Your system sounds like it is powerful enough to run WinXP. It's a good idea to use the 30GB drive as the primary. Even with Win98SE, as a rule, I recommend installing it in a partition no smaller than 4 GB to allow sufficient expansion for third-party software and "running" room.

I have never used Ghost ... I use Drive Image. Is there not an option in the program that will allow you to back up just your files, instead of creating an image of the entire disk; data + the free space? I'm assuming this is why you have the active partition on such a small hard drive.

I did not volunteer to be a beta tester for XP. Does anyone know if the Win9x memory limitations have been corrected in XP?

Personally, I'm still debating if upgrading from Win2K SP2 to WinXP would be worth my time. With my Pentium 4, the multimedia capabilities of my machine are already pretty kickin'.

Comments?

Toejam31

<font color=purple>If there was a reason for everything, having faith would be redundant.</font color=purple>

 

[blah]

WinXP (pro and personal) will be stripped down version of server family, which will come out next year. So there will be no limitations for memory size, the more the better. I would not recommend XP right now if you have Win2k setup working fine (even it is much better than Win2k as far as OS functionality and stability goes). There are no public drivers available at this point; just those that with Windows, they have no API support (openGL, etc), and installing drivers for Win2k could break the system dead. Although Video drivers in XP will give you basic functionality OK, they cannot be used for games and such. Sound works for all things, even my MX300 has good support. Asus7700 both V3k both have a headache with any other drivers but OSs. In the future there will be a good sets of drivers for XP, then it would be ok. So it is up to you.

Post, we'll do the "search"...