I recently had a similar problem reading an NTFS drive on a system 
that Windows has died. I was able to pull off (of the BTFS drive) what 
I needed using Hiren's Boot CD (the current version is 8.1). It is a 
collection of tools, and there is a couple versions of DOS that willl 
allow you to read to/write from NTFS drives. Turned out to be a handy 
little tool!

Douglas Wood

----- Original Message -----
From: Russell McMahon <apptech@paradise.net.nz>
Date: Saturday, June 17, 2006 8:23 am
Subject: [OT] NTFS risky?
To: PIC List <PICLIST@MIT.EDU>

> I've had years of experience with FAT32 formatted HDDs but limited 
> experience of what I can expect from NTFS formatted HDDs.
> 
> I have a system with 3 x Parallel IDE drives on it (30 GB to 10 GB 
> each) and 2 x SIDE 300 GB NTFS drives.
> The boot drive is one of the parallel IDE drives. System is 
> WINDOWS 
> XPHome
> The system is used as an informal server. The two SIDE drives are 
> largely mirrored by use of user controlled backup software. The 
> majority of data is photo files.
> 
> 1.    It's been suggested that after a system crash NTFS drives 
> may be 
> reluctant to allow you to access them in a rebuilt system or if 
> transferred to another system.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> 2.    Data transfer rate to the NTFS drives across the network or 
> between NTFS and FAT32 drives is abysmal. Typically well under 1 
> MB / 
> second. Transfers between 2 x SIDE NTFS drives seems to be much 
> faster. Network is standard 10/100 UTP and works much faster for 
> FAT32 
> transfers.
> 
> The Windows installation is somewhat wounded in other areas and 
> probably needs a complete reinstall. it will probably get replaced 
> with XP professional.
> 
> Are the data transfer rate problems typical of mixed NTFS / FAT32 
> systems or does this seem atypical.
> 
> All relevant (and some irrelevant) wisdom welcomed.
> 
> 
> 
>        Russell McMahon 
> 
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