[SOLVED] formal external drives w/o data loss

[PDN]

I am running Windows 11 and it is backed up to 2 external drives with Macrium. They both work with the rescue media so all is fine.
The issue is one external drive is exfat and the other is NTFS.

Windows back up, if you care to use it, only works with NTFS not exfat.

Is here a way to change that exfat drive to NTFS so it too will work with Windows backup if I choose to use it without losing data?

 

[USAFRet]

1. No, you can't change from exFat to NTFS and retain that same data
2. Use something besides the built in Windows backup tool, Why not continue with Macrium?

 

[PDN]

So I can format but would lose data.
Macrium like other apps is allowing a watered down free version. Just recently it was more comprehensive..
I am sure that soon there will be no free imaging. except Windows(NTFS).

I was thinking of deleting data from the exfat drive and formatting to NTFS. The other drive is already NTFS and contains the same data, ex. images, photos, music. Then I could copy from the older NTFS to the newer NTFS which was exfat.

My pc and both external drives are 500 GB. There is 30 GB of used space on each external drive. I right clicked my exfat drive and quick format says exfat and NTFS.
Do you think this would work?

 

[USAFRet]

The free Macrium is not that much watered down.
I have v7 Free installed on all of my systems except my main PC...that has the paid version.

The current free v8 seems to be similar capabilities as v7.


If both of those drives have the exact same data, then formatting the exfat to NTFS should go OK. Then, just copy the data back over to it.

 

[PDN]

I appreciate the information and will continue with Macrium.