Fat32 vs NTFS on an older laptop

[Dragon365]

Hey guys, I need your input on this. I just recently installed windows 2000 on a Compaq laptop with a Pentium II 233, 96mb of ram, and a 4 gb hard drive, and as you would expect, it is a little bit sluggish. My question is, would it make any difference if i reinstalled with fat32 instead of ntfs?

 

[CZroe]

From what I hear, NTFS performance differences become negligible with large drives (~20GB?).

With a 4GB drive, FAT16 may actually suffice (2 partitions) 🙂 With densities that low, you may need the better performance of FAT16.

 

[Dragon365]

Originally posted by: CZroe
From what I hear, NTFS performance differences become negligible with large drives (~20GB?).

With a 4GB drive, FAT16 may actually suffice (2 partitions) 🙂 With densities that low, you may need the better performance of FAT16.

Does Windows 2000 support fat16 though? I thought it only supported fat32.

 

[Dragon365]

Bumpage for some advice

 

[corkyg]

Double the RAM and double the hard drive. It will still be a bit pokey - NT is too much system for that machine. When you use NTFS, you lose a goosd chunk of your HDD for the MFT Reserved area. I would personally not like NTFS on less than a 20 GB drive.

 

[rade]

There's the issue of reliability and stability as well. NTFS significantly decreases (eliminates?) the chances that you'll lose data simply because of a bad computer crash. Also, NTFS gives you the option to compress files on-the-fly and thus compensates for some of that extra space it uses. I'd always use NTFS given the option, although at the same time I'd never consider using a HDD of measly 4gb space 😉

 

[MournSanity]

Why don't you just try it and see if it makes a difference. If it doesn't you could always reinstall it as NTFS 😉

 

[Dragon365]

Originally posted by: rade
There's the issue of reliability and stability as well. NTFS significantly decreases (eliminates?) the chances that you'll lose data simply because of a bad computer crash. Also, NTFS gives you the option to compress files on-the-fly and thus compensates for some of that extra space it uses. I'd always use NTFS given the option, although at the same time I'd never consider using a HDD of measly 4gb space 😉

It's not for any serious work, so 4gb is enough - just internet browsing and the like.

 

[IEatChildren]

I noticed a difference in boot speed using FAT32 and NTFS.
WinXP booted in 13.4 seconds in FAT32 until I converted it to NTFS cause at the time I thought it was supposed to be faster. And my system was then booting in 19.8 seconds
Of course this is after repeated boot tests, not just once each.
This was on a Maxtor 60gb 7200 RPM ATA100 drive with a 10GB Windows partition (FAT32) and a 50GB storage partition (NTFS)
Upon converting the boot partition to NTFS, it slowed my boot time by over 6 seconds

 

[MDE]

NTFS sacrifices speed for reliability and security, so your boot times will be slower.

 

[Auric]

The primary difference is the default cluster size. The smaller, the more efficient use of space but slower access. If you want to use big clusters with NTFS then do so, at least you will not be sacrificing reliability as with FAT32.