Page 1 of 1

Fat 32 or NTFS

PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 9:25 am
by FS_Pilot
Which is better FAT32 or NTFS partitions. Is there any difference in the performance of FS2002 when running on Fat32 compared to NTFS or Vise Versa.

Re: Fat 32 or NTFS

PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 10:39 am
by zcottovision
NTFS is generally better, apparently. But I haven't tried it. I'm running 2k2 on a FAT32 partition on XP, and it's fine. I probably wouldn't notice much of a difference between NTFS and FAT32.

Re: Fat 32 or NTFS

PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 6:18 pm
by hiflyphil
Hi

Use NTFS partitions to increase security basically.  But for home use I'd stick to FAT32 as NTFS can cause you annoying little troubles, esspecially when the system fails and you've got to do the wipe and reboot etc, etc.
And also you can't convert back to FAT32 later should the need arise.

Phil
;)

Re: Fat 32 or NTFS

PostPosted: Mon Aug 25, 2003 10:25 pm
by geezer
Actually, while security is an issue with fat32, the real reason to use ntfs is that it uses less disk space for the same amount of data.

ntfs uses a formatting scheme where the clusters are smaller so that files produce less surplus space in partially used clusters.

If you advance to ntfs, and there is no reason not to if you aren't dual booting between win9x or Linux, you will see that you have more room on your hard drive available. In these days of huge hard drives it may not be as much an issue as the old days of under a GB on a hard drive but files are quicker to load with smaller cluster sizes.

This url might help: http://www.ntfs.com/ and here: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_optimization.htm