Windows-NT and FAT32

Windows-NT cannot recognize FAT-32 partitions. If you want to install NT alongside another OS that has FAT-32 support, you have three choices:

  • Don't use the FAT-32 OR
  • Don't use NTFS or FAT-32 on ANY partitions OR
  • Use two physical hard drives

    • IN ALL CASES THE BOOT PARTITION MUST BE FAT-16. There is an additional restriction -- because of the limitations of the OS, the NT partition cannot begin later than 4096MB into the hard drive
    Some examples of acceptable setups are:
    • Two partitions on one hard drive
      • Boot partition : DOS on a FAT-16 partition
      • Windows-NT on a second partition occupying the rest of the hard drive
    • Three partitions on one hard drive
      • Boot partition : Windows-98 on a FAT-16 partition
      • Windows-NT on a second partition formatted with the FAT file system
      • The remainder of the hard drive on a FAT-32 partition. This could be used by Windows-98 for data storage but would be invisible to NT.
    • Two physical hard drives
      • Boot partition : Windows-95 OSR-2 on a FAT-16 partition
      • A FAT-32 partition occupying the rest of the first hard drive, visible to Win-95 for storage but invisible to NT
      • The second hard drive is entirely devoted to Windows-NT and is formatted with the NTFS file system. It is invisible to 95 but visible to NT.

    Actually there is a way with third party software that you can install a file-system driver to enable NT to read FAT-32 partitions after it has started up but not on the boot partition. It is available from www.winternals.com along with a number of other nifty file-system drivers. But please let me repeat, during the boot process NT must see on the C: drive a file system that the kernel can recognize, i. e. FAT-16 or NTFS, not FAT-32

    For those whose BIOS supports booting from a hard drive other than C: there is another nifty option, requiring the use of 2 hard drives:
  • Using the first hard drive, install Windows-98 (or 95 OSR-2) on the entire drive using FAT-32
  • Physically remove the hard drive
  • Install the second hard drive and install Windows-NT ONLY on the drive, using the entire drive formatted with NTFS.
  • Rejumper the NT drive as a slave drive. If necessary (depending on manufacturer) also rejumper the Windows-98 drive as a master in a two-drive system.
  • Physically reinstall both drives on the same IDE connector.

    • Now, you can select the OS to start by selecting the boot drive in BIOS. Set it to C: to boot Windows-98, or to D: to boot Windows-NT. If using Windows-NT in such a setup, it will see the D: drive as C: and not recognize the Windows-98 drive at all. Likewise, Windows-98 would not recognize the NT drive at all, unless you obtained the appropriate 3rd-party file system drivers from the Winternals website.
    RETURN TO NT INSTALLATION