hey ken,

thats exactly it! just checked out the properties on the disks and low and
behold, the new pc's drive is in NTFS format.

hmmm...

so whats best?? should i leave the disk in NTFS r convert it to FAT - i'm
unsure as to the difference but i'll do digging on the web.

i come from a mac background, so this is a bit weird. the nearest i've come
is the difference between HFS and HFS+ disks. os 8.1 and above use the +
version that makes better use of block size. it doesn't mess with the
permissions though!

many thanks for helping me get to the bottom of this,

jake

> Probaby because one partition (with only the 1 tab) is formatted as FAT or
> FAT32, and the other partition (with 3 tabs) is formatted as NTFS.
> 
> NTFS partitions support file/folder level permissions (ie you can assign
> permissions to individual folders/files to groups or individual user
> accounts). You can't do that on FAT/FAT32 partitions.
> 
> You can use the convert.exe utility to convert a FAT partition to NTFS (or
> use the Computer Management MMC Snapin).
> 
> Cheers
> Ken