Reinstalling Windows 2000 - Keeping Files

[Acy]

I need to reinstall Windows 2000 which is on my C: partition.

I also have data on partitions D:, E:, and F:


If I reformat C: and reinstall Windows 2000 on C:, will my data on D:, E:, and F: still be intact?

Thanks all!

[sbp]

Yes

[Joshua]

Yes it will, but make sure that you remove any security permissioning you have on the data. The permissions are based on a unique SID for each account. IF you blow away, reformat and recreate the same accounts, they will still have different SID's making you put a lot of effort into getting access to your files.

[Acy]

Thanks for the advice.

If I were to install Win 98 instead of reinstalling Windows 2000, it wouldn't work anymore right? Because of the 2 different file systems?

[Joshua]

Yup. The way around this would be to copy the files (via network cable or otherwise) to a Win98 or other FAT file system machine prior to the rebuild.

The other option is to burn your files to CD's which will strip the permissions and NTFS guts off of them.