Virtual Machine and NTFS

Hi! I"m moving to a new machine that probably won't run win98, so I
planned to run it from a Virtual Machine under winxpsp3

Is it okay to have all the harddrive partitions NTFS, even though
win98 can't normally read NTFS?

Thanks


Much Less important:
Is Connectix Virtual PC for Windows, version 5, okay? Or is it
obsolete by now. It lists XP on the box, but I wonder if it will have
USB support with version 5.

On 10/16/2010 12:33 AM, mm wrote:
Hi! I"m moving to a new machine that probably won't run win98, so I
planned to run it from a Virtual Machine under winxpsp3

Is it okay to have all the harddrive partitions NTFS, even though
win98 can't normally read NTFS?




It should work just fine.

If there are any problems they will not be due to the drive being NTFS
at any rate



snip

On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:16:58 -0500, philo wrote:

On 10/16/2010 12:33 AM, mm wrote:
Hi! I"m moving to a new machine that probably won't run win98, so I
planned to run it from a Virtual Machine under winxpsp3

Is it okay to have all the harddrive partitions NTFS, even though
win98 can't normally read NTFS?




It should work just fine.

If there are any problems they will not be due to the drive being NTFS
at any rate

Great, thank you. Now I have all the parts to fix up my friends old
2.4 gig Dell for myself. I think I'll like the increased speed.

snip

In message , mm
writes:
On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:16:58 -0500, philo wrote:

On 10/16/2010 12:33 AM, mm wrote:
Hi! I"m moving to a new machine that probably won't run win98, so I
planned to run it from a Virtual Machine under winxpsp3

Is it okay to have all the harddrive partitions NTFS, even though
win98 can't normally read NTFS?




It should work just fine.

If there are any problems they will not be due to the drive being NTFS
at any rate

Great, thank you. Now I have all the parts to fix up my friends old
2.4 gig Dell for myself. I think I'll like the increased speed.

snip

If you're actually starting from scratch (which "have all the parts"
suggests to me that you are) anyway, received wisdom here seems to be
that you should set it up as FAT anyway: the alleged benefits of NTFS
being largely moot for the single home user, and XP will operate
perfectly happily under FAT.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

freedom of speech is useless if nobody can hear you.
-- David Harris -- Author, Pegasus Mail Dunedin, May 2002.

On 10/17/2010 04:02 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:



It should work just fine.

If there are any problems they will not be due to the drive being NTFS
at any rate

Great, thank you. Now I have all the parts to fix up my friends old
2.4 gig Dell for myself. I think I'll like the increased speed.

snip

If you're actually starting from scratch (which "have all the parts"
suggests to me that you are) anyway, received wisdom here seems to be
that you should set it up as FAT anyway: the alleged benefits of NTFS
being largely moot for the single home user, and XP will operate
perfectly happily under FAT.



I beg to differ.

First off, on a large partition fat32 has very poor cluster size as
compared to NTFS. Additionally , since many people are now storing
movies and such with large files sizes, fat32 cannot handle any files
over 4 gigs .

Additionally, XP is *deliberately* crippled in that it cannot create a
fat32 partition larger than 32 gigs. If one wanted to install XP on a
fat32 partition larger than 32 gigs, though it's possible to do...
it's not possible to do from the XP installer.

Though for a home user, the security features of NTFS may not be needed,
what's extremely important is the fault tolerance of NTFS.


I do a lot of computer repair work and have seen entire fat32 file
systems hosed by a bad shut down. The user, in attempt to fix things has
typically run scandisk and *sometimes* has ended up with a drive full of
..chk files.

OTOH:
I've seen some rather dramatic file system recoveries under NTFS running
chkdsk /f or chkdsk /r .

Note: I am not saying a bad shut down will always destroy a fat32
installed OS...nor am I saying that NTFS is infallible. What I am saying
is that NTFS is considerably more resilient.




The thing some people find convenient about fat32 is that the system can
easily be accessed by a win98 boot floppy. However an NTFS drive can
still be accessed from the repair console...or from a live Linux cd

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , mm
writes:
On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:16:58 -0500, philo wrote:

On 10/16/2010 12:33 AM, mm wrote:
Hi! I"m moving to a new machine that probably won't run win98, so
I
planned to run it from a Virtual Machine under winxpsp3

Is it okay to have all the harddrive partitions NTFS, even though
win98 can't normally read NTFS?




It should work just fine.

If there are any problems they will not be due to the drive being
NTFS
at any rate

Great, thank you. Now I have all the parts to fix up my friends old
2.4 gig Dell for myself. I think I'll like the increased speed.

snip

If you're actually starting from scratch (which "have all the parts"
suggests to me that you are) anyway, received wisdom here seems to be
that you should set it up as FAT anyway: the alleged benefits of NTFS
being largely moot for the single home user, and XP will operate
perfectly happily under FAT.

I too must beg to differ, for many of the same reasons as philo. There
are other reasons besides security to use NTFS in this scenario.
Also, if you use FAT32, you will have to limit Virtual PC's VHD files'
size to 4GB....another shortcoming.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

"mm" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:16:58 -0500, philo wrote:

On 10/16/2010 12:33 AM, mm wrote:
Hi! I"m moving to a new machine that probably won't run win98, so I
planned to run it from a Virtual Machine under winxpsp3

Is it okay to have all the harddrive partitions NTFS, even though
win98 can't normally read NTFS?




It should work just fine.

If there are any problems they will not be due to the drive being NTFS
at any rate

Great, thank you. Now I have all the parts to fix up my friends old
2.4 gig Dell for myself. I think I'll like the increased speed.

snip

Are you using XPSP3 Home or Pro Edition as the host OS?

If you find the old Connectix version 5 does not do all you want, try
the newer free version, Virtual PC 2007:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...displaylang=en

--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

philo wrote:

If you're actually starting from scratch (which "have all the
parts" suggests to me that you are) anyway, received wisdom
here seems to be that you should set it up as FAT anyway:
the alleged benefits of NTFS being largely moot for the
single home user, and XP will operate perfectly happily
under FAT.

I beg to differ.

First off, on a large partition fat32 has very poor cluster
size as compared to NTFS.

That is myth #1.

I have formatted a 500 gb SATA drive as single partition FAT32 using 4
kb cluster size (the default cluster size for NTFS) and have installed
and run Windows 98se from such a drive. That drive had 120 million
clusters, and is not compatible with certain drive diagnostic and
optimization tools (like the windows me version of scandisk). The DOS
version of scandisk does run and function properly, however.

You must use third-party drive preparation software to create a FAT32
volume with non-standard cluster size, because Microsoft intentionally
forces format.com to scale up the cluster size along with the volume
size so as to maintain about a max of 2 million clusters. There is no
technical reason for doing this, but it established the concept in the
minds of many that FAT32 has this problem where it must use large
cluster sizes as volumes get bigger.

All that said, it should be noted that maintaining a small cluster size
(say 4 kb) on a relatively large volume (say, anything larger than 32
gb) is not really useful from a file-layout perspective. For those that
have large drives (250 gb or larger) and that create large partitions
just to store large media files, the use of 32kb clusters is more
optimal than 4 kb.

Additionally , since many people are now storing movies and such
with large files sizes, fat32 cannot handle any files over 4 gigs.

While that is true, it rarely comes up as a realistic or practical
limitation for FAT32. The most common multimedia format in common use
is the DVD .VOB file, which self-limit themselves to be 1 gb.

The only file type that I ever see exceed the 4 gb size are virtual
machine image files, which you will not see on a win-9x machine but you
would see on an XP (or higher) PC running VM Ware, Microsoft Virtual PC,
etc. But 4 gb should be enough to contain a modest image of a virtual
windows-98 machine.

Additionally, XP is *deliberately* crippled in that it cannot create
a fat32 partition larger than 32 gigs.

That is true, but it's not a limitation of FAT32 (I thought this was a
list of bad things about FAT32).

There is plenty of third-party software that allows you to create FAT32
volumes larger than 32 gb on a win-2k/XP/etc machine, and one can always
boot an MS-DOS floppy with format and fdisk and create such a volume
that way.

If one wanted to install XP on a fat32 partition larger than
32 gigs, though it's possible to do... it's not possible to
do from the XP installer.

If a the desired FAT32 partition has already been created before
starting the installation of XP, then XP will install itself onto that
partition, even if the partition is larger than 32 gb.

Though for a home user, the security features of NTFS may not be
needed, what's extremely important is the fault tolerance of NTFS.

Given modern drives that for the past 5 to 8 years have had their own
ability to detect and re-map bad sectors and their own internal caching,
the need for the transaction journalling performed by NTFS has been
greatly reduced. And for the typical home or SOHO PC that is not a
server, NTFS is more of a liability than a benefit.

NTFS is a proprietary format and is not fully documented. It's
directory structure is stored in a distrubuted way across the drive,
mixed in with user data. An NTFS volume can be hosed in such a way as
to render recovery practically impossible, and most NTFS recovery
software is very expensive. FAT32 file structure is simple and
file-chain reconstruction is trivial and can restore any volume that at
first look appears to be completely trashed.

The extra sophistication and transaction journalling performed by NTFS
reduces it's overall performance compared to FAT32. So for those who
want to optimize the over-all speed of their PC's, FAT32 is a faster
file system than NTFS.

I do a lot of computer repair work and have seen entire fat32
file systems hosed by a bad shut down. The user, in attempt to
fix things has typically run scandisk and *sometimes* has ended
up with a drive full of .chk files.

That's another common myth about FAT32 - that the appearance of many
..chk files must mean that it's inferior to NTFS.

While it might look untidy, the mere existance of those .chk files don't
mean anything about how compentent or capable FAT32 is, and it's not
hard to just delete them and get on with your business.

You did not say in your example if the user's drive and OS was operable
and functional despite the existance of those .chk files.

What I am saying is that NTFS is considerably more resilient.

What you don't understand about NTFS is that it will silently delete
user-data to restore it's own integrity as a way to cope with a failed
transaction, while FAT32 will create lost or orphaned clusters that are
recoverable but who's existance is not itself a liability to the user or
the file system.

The thing some people find convenient about fat32 is that the
system can easily be accessed by a win98 boot floppy.

Or, if you've installed DOS first on an FAT32 drive, and then install XP
as a second OS, you can have a choice at boot-up to run DOS or XP.

However an NTFS drive can still be accessed from the repair
console...

The repair console is garbage and does not compare in any way to the
utility and capability of a real DOS-type command environment.

On 10/17/2010 09:15 AM, Philo is wrong wrote:
philo wrote:

snip


I'm snipping most of this as I don't want to get into a big argument
here and yes, you've made some valid points but I will respond to the
following as it's important:



While it might look untidy, the mere existance of those .chk files don't
mean anything about how compentent or capable FAT32 is, and it's not
hard to just delete them and get on with your business.

You did not say in your example if the user's drive and OS was operable
and functional despite the existance of those .chk files.


In some cases, after running scandisk,

there were a lot of .chk files but the operating system and data are
intact...the .chk files can simply be deleted

However in *some* situations I've seen all or most data on the drive
converted to .chk files and a data recovery of any type would be close
to impossible.

The likelihood of a "repair" turning that catastrophic on an NTFS file
system is considerably less...though of course not impossible.
As I've mentioned, I've seen some nearly miraculous recoveries on NTFS
systems...one I recall vividly was on a drive that had physically gone
into failure and had severe read/write errors.

Though it was tedious I ended up retrieving 99% of the data...
and that was due to NTFS' MFT which is of course lacking on fat32

FAT32 system and NTFS system set up the cluster sizes the same way to the
size of the Hard Drive!
Philo that's way they say you are wrong
XP FAT32 system and NTFS repair the same
Philo that's way they say you are wrong
And after running scandisk, if their a lot of .chk files it's time to get
and New Hard Drive and Xcopy the old Hard Drive it!
Philo that's way they say you are wrong
And you have a Linux i686; and reading the Newsgroups from a Thunderbird
Philo that's way they say you are wrong