Converting FAT32 to NTFS

Posted by Kev Atkinson

I needed to convert a FAT32 drive to NTFS today and as it was 500GB I wasn’t sure how easy it might be. I contemplated backing it all up then formatting it, but then I found out you can do it on a live drive.

Backups are always recommended – I made an educated decision not to on this occasion but if it had of gone wrong I would have lost over 400GB of files.

Below is the output from command prompt. In Windows 7 I searched for CMD and ran it as an admin to do the below. E was the drive I was working on and the command is;
convert e: /fs:ntfs

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
 Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Kev>convert e: /fs:ntfs
 The type of the file system is FAT32.
 Enter current volume label for drive E: LOCAL STORE
 Volume LOCAL STORE created 01/05/2011 19:16
 Volume Serial Number is 8BA5-BE5E
 Windows is verifying files and folders...
 File and folder verification is complete.
 Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
 488,256,704 KB total disk space.
 1,085,472 KB in 534 hidden files.
 181,248 KB in 5,590 folders.
 415,408,448 KB in 102,391 files.
 71,581,504 KB are available.
32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
 15,258,022 total allocation units on disk.
 2,236,922 allocation units available on disk.
Determining disk space required for file system conversion...
 Total disk space: 488375968 KB
 Free space on volume: 71581504 KB
 Space required for conversion: 808979 KB
 Converting file system
 Conversion complete
C:\Users\Kev>

Fibre Optic Broadband

Posted by Kev Atkinson

I just thought I’d write a quick post about fibre optic broadband. I’ve finally got it. This is a good thing.

I’ve wanted to upgrade to FTTC for a while now as I do a lot of work online and commonly have a need to download 300/400/500 mb from one place, and upload them to the other. As such doing that on a 13MB ADSL connection with a 1MB upload was a little painful. I’d often queue the work up till late on an evening when I didn’t need to use the connection, or do it through the day when the house was empty.

I looked at Virgin Media. They do a 100 (possibly 120) MB connection but with a limited upload. It’s £30 a month. They also traffic shape badly, and have bad reviews for doing so. Peak times slow you right down and they block certain features. I decided in 2011 that I wouldn’t entertain Virgin anyway as they are awful (see previous posts on my bad customer service).

So I waited for fibre optic broadband to come along. I started looking in January 2012 and it had by exchange down to be done in the summer. So I waited, and the summer passed. Then Autumn came and the date for enabling my exchange came and passed. The date was changed on the BT Openreach page and I slowly started to give up hope.

These are the steps I took to keep check on FTTC enabling in my area;

  1. You can see when your exchange will be enabled by visiting http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when.
  2. Once you have a date – follow @Openreach_news on Twitter. That service tweets when exchanges are active. If you’re really sad subscribe and you’ll be alerted everytime they tweet.
  3. Wait around 4-6 weeks following your exchange activation date. This is how long it took for BT Openreach to replace the cabinet near my house with a new fibre cabinet.
    Click here to see a fibre cabinet. 
  4. Place your order with an ISP. I opted to stay with Sky. Sky charge £50 for the activation and installation whilst BT Infinity is free. However BT Infinity have caps and also traffic shape so I opted to remain with Sky. It took a week from order to installation.

So I now have Sky Fibre Unlimited Pro. I opted to pay £10 a month more to have a 20MB upload. This means I can do my work a lot quicker, and not bother the partner when she is playing on Xbox live.

My YouTube Channel

Posted by Kev Atkinson

I thought I would share my YouTube channel with you all, on it I make stupid videos about how to fix computer equipment. One of the videos has became just a little bit popular and it’s one of my best – so I thought I would share it;
.

 

If you fancy having a look through the other ones,  see my ProComputerSupport channel.

2013 Onwards

Posted by Kev Atkinson

I decided this month to turn KevAtkinson.co.uk into a full time blog, it was hard to keep up to date and with all the other things I do these days I just wanted something simple to manage, and an easy way for people to get in touch.

I’m always busy on Twitter too, find me @kevatkinson

I’ll hopefully be sticking bits and pieces up on here to keep it interesting. nearly 2,000 people a month come here and I’ve no idea why so hopefully I can entertain you somehow. I’ve uploaded a misheard lyric piece of audio for a bit of fun. Here it is;
[audio:http://kevatkinson.co.uk/blog/audio/cock.mp3]

What does Alexandra Burke love taking? Guesses in the comments section!