[Thinkpad] T43

[Michael Geary]

> Without getting into an OT war on this, there are certainly 
> some valid reasons to prefer Fat32 on a partition instead of 
> NTFS.  I had a series of system crashes with NTFS systems a 
> couple of years ago (on 2 different machines), and system 
> attempts to automatically repair the directory structure 
> munged everything so badly that none of my recovery utilities 
> could do anything.  I now keep the main Windows partition 
> small and FAT32, and the remainder of the system NTFS - this 
> gives me the security and random-access-speed advantages of 
> NTFS, and the simplicity of FAT32 for basic system stuff (as 
> well as a platform for multi-booting into DOS to run some 
> very old software I need that will not run in a DOS window).

Using FAT32 does allow you to use recovery utilities that do not understand
NTFS.

BUT... It makes it *MUCH* more likely that you will need to use those
recovery utilities. NTFS is in a completely different league than FAT32 when
it comes to robustness.

Not a tradeoff I'd be willing to make, but YMMV.

For running that old DOS software, VMware is the best solution. You can
create a DOS VM that lets you actually run DOS in its own virtual machine.
No rebooting required. You can use the free VMware player - let me know if
you'd like a blank VM image ready to install DOS in.

-Mike