Windows support converting a FAT formatted partition to NTFS formatted partition using a command-line tool-Convert.exe. The file system conversion is not a two-way process, i.e. you cannot convert back a NTFS partition to FAT partition until you format it. However, you might also experience some issues while using the tool, which compel you to reformat the volume. In such cases, it is vital that you have a valid data backup to restore the data or else you will need to use a powerful Windows Partition Recovery software.
To illustrate this issue, consider that you use a disk that is formatted to FAT16 or FAT32 file system. You use Convert.exe to convert its file system to NTFS. But you fail to perform this task and come across an error message:
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Determining disk space required for file system conversion...
Insufficient disk space for conversion
The conversion failed.
Drive: was not converted to ntfs
You encounter this error even if the disk is not deficient of free space.
Cause
The above error occurs because the target partition contains some bad sectors at its end. Convert.exe tool requires some space, called work area, at partition's end to create MFT of the new partition. But if it finds bad sectors at this place, it fails to convert the partition and gives the error message as above. To verify if this is the cause, you can run chkdsk /f/r command on the target volume that will show description of bad sectors, if any present on the volume.
Solution
To solve the discussed issue, you should follow these steps:
Reformat the target volume with NTFS file system
Restore the data from backup, if available and valid
If you find issues while restoring from backup, you need to use
Partition Recovery software.
Windows Partition Recovery software are powerful utilities designed to perform safe, effective and complete recovery of lost, missing, corrupted or formatted partitions. These tools apply advanced scanning algorithms to locate the lost data from a logically crashed disk. Such applications provide you user-friendly interface and hence can be easily implemented.
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a completely reliable and advanced utility that recovers lost, deleted or damaged partitions from Windows 7 RC1, Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000 based systems. It is a non-destructive
Partition Recovery Software application embedded with advanced options and rich graphic features. The tool supports FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems.
