You can use the Disk Management console to format or reformat dynamic volumes. To format a dynamic volume in Vista, open the Disk Management console. In the details pane, right click the appropriate volume and click Format. Select the file system you want to use and click OK.

Keep in mind that you can convert from FAT to NTFS without having to reformat the volume. In other words, you will not lose any data. However, this is a one time conversion. In order to revert back to FAT, you will need to reformat the volume.

Typically you should choose NTFS over FAT32 because of the additional features it supports such as file level security, disk compression, file encryption, and disk quotas. Vista includes support for FAT and FAT32 to remain compatible with older operating systems. In most cases the only time you would want to use FAT32 is for multi-boot configurations where you have Vista and an older operating system, such as Windows 98, running on the same system.

Changing the Drive Letter Assigned to a Dynamic Volume
In Vista, you can use the Disk Management console to manage the drives on your computer. One of the things you may want to do at some point is change the drive letter assignments. You can assign any letter between C and Z to a hard disk drive while letters A and B are reserved for floppy disk drives.

To access the Disk Management console, right click Computer and select Manage. Under Storage, click Disk Management. The drive configuration of your computer will be displayed in the details pane. You can change the drive letter by right clicking any volume and selecting Change Drive Letter and Paths. Click the Change button and use the drop down arrow to select the drive letter you want to assign to the volume. Click OK. Click Yes to confirm your actions.

Two points you must keep in mind when performing this procedure. You cannot change the drive letter assigned to the boot or system partition using this method. Second, some programs may refer to specific drive letters for environmental variables. Changing the drive letters may result in such programs not functioning correctly.

[tags]dynamic disk, vista, windows[/tags]