On 6 Apr 2003, at 19:45, Robert Lendrim wrote:

> I have two computers
> 1. Win98 Fat32
> 2. WinXP NTFS
>
> I have a few mp3 files on an external USB hard drive that were downloaded
> from the Fat32 computer. I would like to plug the USB drive into the NTFS
> computer, play them, run scandisk, defrag, etc. If I do that, will the
> files be modified in any way, and will they still play on the Fat32
> computer?   Thanks, Bob

  There are two basic possibilities:

1.  The USB drive looks like a FAT32 drive to the OS.
  Since both OSes support FAT32, you should be able to perform drive
maintenance functions such as scandisk, defrag, etc, from either machine
without losing compatibility.

2.  The USB drive looks like a remote network drive to the OS.
  In this case, neither OS will have the kind of device access needed to
perform such functions.

  In either case, the files will remain compatible with both computers.

David Gillett

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml