Does Windows NT 4.0 support removable magneto-optical (MO) devices and removable hard disks? My company is attempting to decide which storage is best for our environment, and someone told us that NT 4.0 restricts the use of removable disks.

A. NT 4.0 can handle both MO devices and removable hard disks. However, some restrictions exist. The OS treats such removable disks as hard disks, so you must partition the disks and assign them a drive letter. (After you assign a drive letter to a device, you can't change that letter.) NT supports FAT and NTFS on these disks, but the disks can have only a primary partition. You can install the winnt directory on a removable disk, but the NT boot files (i.e., NT Loader—NTLDR, ntdetect, and boot.ini) must be on either a 3.5" disk or a fixed hard disk. Don't place the pagefile on a removable disk: Removable disks slow performance, and NT generally locks such devices to avoid corrupting current files.