Hello Don57, NTFS is the preferred file system for all of your computers, including the Vista laptop. Since the drive is new and if there is no data on it that you need, rather than convert the file system I would format the drive. To format the external drive, on the computer the drive is connected to go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disc Management. In the right pane of the Disc Management console right click the area next to the external drive and select "Format". The default format file system on XP and Vista is NTFS. After the format completes your drive should be ready to use.