confused about Fat32

[QueBert]

I got a new HD yesterday, I was under the impression that Fat32 has a partition size limit of 80 gigabytes. Is this not true? It's a 120gb drive, and I made one partition 95 gig's, and it's showing up in XP fine, just wondering if I should expect errors? I was gonna convert it to NTFS *maybe*

 

[4dm]

Fat32 does have a limit, but alas I do not remember what it is. I would definitely convert it to NTFS though, as it allows for much greater security of the information stored on your HDD. Just remember that if you convert it to NTFS, any 9x systems (windows 95, 98, ME) will not be able to read the data on it, and if you plan to dualboot another operating system (ie. linux) you could encounter serious errors.

Hope this helps

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: 4dm
Fat32 does have a limit, but alas I do not remember what it is. I would definitely convert it to NTFS though, as it allows for much greater security of the information stored on your HDD. Just remember that if you convert it to NTFS, any 9x systems (windows 95, 98, ME) will not be able to read the data on it, and if you plan to dualboot another operating system (ie. linux) you could encounter serious errors.

Hope this helps

I don't need security, but I do still use Dos, NTFS would be a last resort for me. I'm guessing since XP is seeing the partition as 92 gigs, then 80 gig's can't be the limit 🙂

and I think I'ma put FBSD on there, but I can just make it's own partition with Partition Magic.

 

[HappyPuppy]

This is what Microsoft has to say about it.

More interesting info here.

 

[Fern]

I'm running win98se on all my office machines. One has a I20gig HD, shows up fine. BTW, it was one I20gig partition (am now breaking into several partitions as I write this)

 

[huesmann]

You should have no trouble with a 120GB drive and FAT32. You will have the 4GB file size limitation though, so if you're into video work, it behooves you to go NTFS. Is there a reason you're still using FAT32?

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: huesmann
You should have no trouble with a 120GB drive and FAT32. You will have the 4GB file size limitation though, so if you're into video work, it behooves you to go NTFS. Is there a reason you're still using FAT32?

I don't change 🙂 I remember when it was fat16 and I had to up to fat32. I honestly think if I get this drive working I will convert the partition to NTFS. don't care about the security, but the 4+ gig file size thing is nice, just got a DVD burner and might need that.

 

[nanaki333]

Originally posted by: 4dm
Fat32 does have a limit, but alas I do not remember what it is. I would definitely convert it to NTFS though, as it allows for much greater security of the information stored on your HDD. Just remember that if you convert it to NTFS, any 9x systems (windows 95, 98, ME) will not be able to read the data on it, and if you plan to dualboot another operating system (ie. linux) you could encounter serious errors.

Hope this helps

not that it's relevant right now, but the max size for a FAT32 partition is 2TB

 

[8ballcoupe]

If you are really thinking you'll want to go to NTFS you'll probably be happier deleting that FAT32 partition and creating an NTFS partition directly from Windows XP setup (or from within Windows XP using the disk manager). Converting a FAT32 partition that was created using FDISK will probably cause you to wind up with 512 byte clusters on that partition.

Ernie

 

[Dave332]

I would go ahead and convert the sucker. If you end up with 512 byte clusters it's because you set it that way. By default in 2000/XP, convert and format both use a 4k cluster. It may be benificial to use 512 byte clusters (being the smallest you can use with NTFS) because it will use your disk space more efficiently. Additionally, if you need to read the NTFS volume, the latest versions of most linux distro's now support ntfs and there is an "active NTFS Reader for DOS" available. Plus, you could always just convert back with third party software. BTW, the encryption on NTFS is a complete and total joke. It uses an antiquated encryption scheme that was abandonded by linux about 4 years ago and anyone who knows how to use the nt4/2000/XP command line can own and unencrypt your files in about 2 seconds.

 

[BadThad]

Originally posted by: Dave332
I would go ahead and convert the sucker. If you end up with 512 byte clusters it's because you set it that way. By default in 2000/XP, convert and format both use a 4k cluster. It may be benificial to use 512 byte clusters (being the smallest you can use with NTFS) because it will use your disk space more efficiently. Additionally, if you need to read the NTFS volume, the latest versions of most linux distro's now support ntfs and there is an "active NTFS Reader for DOS" available. Plus, you could always just convert back with third party software. BTW, the encryption on NTFS is a complete and total joke. It uses an antiquated encryption scheme that was abandonded by linux about 4 years ago and anyone who knows how to use the nt4/2000/XP command line can own and unencrypt your files in about 2 seconds.

A 512 byte cluster system is HORRIBLE. It's way slower than using 4k clusters and who cares about cluster slack anymore....drives are huge.

Also, NTFS is just more robust than FAT32....I'd go NTFS if at all possible.

 

[8ballcoupe]

I would go ahead and convert the sucker. If you end up with 512 byte clusters it's because you set it that way. By default in 2000/XP, convert and format both use a 4k cluster. It may be benificial to use 512 byte clusters (being the smallest you can use with NTFS) because it will use your disk space more efficiently. Additionally, if you need to read the NTFS volume, the latest versions of most linux distro's now support ntfs and there is an "active NTFS Reader for DOS" available. Plus, you could always just convert back with third party software. BTW, the encryption on NTFS is a complete and total joke. It uses an antiquated encryption scheme that was abandonded by linux about 4 years ago and anyone who knows how to use the nt4/2000/XP command line can own and unencrypt your files in about 2 seconds.

That's not true. It works that way if you are creating a new partition. CONVERT doesn't give you a choice. In Windows XP it will TRY to give you 4K, but it often fails if the FAT patition was created in the first place using the WinXP DISKPART utility. If it fails, you get 512 byte clutsers. Terrible for performance on a partition that large.

And your statement about EFS just doesn't jibe with reality.

But the encryption system is not the main reason I would recommend NTFS. Journaling is.

Ernie

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Dave332
I would go ahead and convert the sucker. If you end up with 512 byte clusters it's because you set it that way. By default in 2000/XP, convert and format both use a 4k cluster. It may be benificial to use 512 byte clusters (being the smallest you can use with NTFS) because it will use your disk space more efficiently. Additionally, if you need to read the NTFS volume, the latest versions of most linux distro's now support ntfs and there is an "active NTFS Reader for DOS" available. Plus, you could always just convert back with third party software. BTW, the encryption on NTFS is a complete and total joke. It uses an antiquated encryption scheme that was abandonded by linux about 4 years ago and anyone who knows how to use the nt4/2000/XP command line can own and unencrypt your files in about 2 seconds.

Oh, please, do enlighten me. I'd be so entertained to hear how you think you can do that.

 

[QueBert]

got my new drive working, 3 partitions. my main Windows XP one, my D: which is like 130 gigs, and I made a NTFS which is 24 gigs, so I can edit 4+ gig files (if the day ever comes)

 

[boran]

Originally posted by: DopeFiend

Originally posted by: Dave332
I would go ahead and convert the sucker. If you end up with 512 byte clusters it's because you set it that way. By default in 2000/XP, convert and format both use a 4k cluster. It may be benificial to use 512 byte clusters (being the smallest you can use with NTFS) because it will use your disk space more efficiently. Additionally, if you need to read the NTFS volume, the latest versions of most linux distro's now support ntfs and there is an "active NTFS Reader for DOS" available. Plus, you could always just convert back with third party software. BTW, the encryption on NTFS is a complete and total joke. It uses an antiquated encryption scheme that was abandonded by linux about 4 years ago and anyone who knows how to use the nt4/2000/XP command line can own and unencrypt your files in about 2 seconds.

Oh, please, do enlighten me. I'd be so entertained to hear how you think you can do that.

enlighten me too, there are many, many people that have lost massive amounts of data because the encryption was too good (and they didnt have their key backed up)

 

[Calin]

You can read the NTFS volumes in DOS with some free utilities (NTFSDOS came to my mind). Linux has read-only support for NTFS, and experimental write support (I don't suggest to use it on your system drive).
But you won't be able to boot DOS from a NTFS partition, even if reading it should be OK

Calin

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: 4dm
Fat32 does have a limit, but alas I do not remember what it is.

I think that it's on the order of around 146TB or something. Or maybe that's the limit of 48-bit LBA, I forget. Either way, we won't have HDs of that capacity within this lifetime, that's for sure. (Even following Moore's Law, if it applied to storage.)

Originally posted by: 4dmI would definitely convert it to NTFS though, as it allows for much greater security of the information stored on your HDD. Just remember that if you convert it to NTFS, any 9x systems (windows 95, 98, ME) will not be able to read the data on it, and if you plan to dualboot another operating system (ie. linux) you could encounter serious errors.
Hope this helps

If you care about portability of your data or data-recovery, I would suggest staying with FAT32 rather than NTFS. On the other hand, if you plan on working with DVDs or larger media files, you might consider creating at least one NTFS partition. The reason being that the maximum size of any one file under FAT32 is 4GiB. DVD image files could be larger than that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Dave332
BTW, the encryption on NTFS is a complete and total joke. It uses an antiquated encryption scheme that was abandonded by linux about 4 years ago and anyone who knows how to use the nt4/2000/XP command line can own and unencrypt your files in about 2 seconds.

If you know how to do that, then you might want to visit the Technical Support board, and help some people.

Personally, I just suspect that you are incorrect in that matter, and are mistaking NTFS's security ACLs that can be associated with files, vs. NTFS's actual EFS encryption.

Security ACLs can be trivially bypassed if you have physical access to the drive. Encryption.. not so easy, especially if you only have the file data and not the key. Granted, if you have the whole HD, then you also have the stored decryption cert, and all that is left is to brute-force the user's acct password to decrypt that cert, and then decrypt the encryption keys for the files, and then decrypt the file's data itself. That is theoretically possible, but will definately take more than "2 seconds". 😛