Fat32 -vs- NTFS

thuffner3

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Nov 26, 2003
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Hello all, and Happy Easter.

I have an older 40gig harddrive on IDE channel 2 as slave.
It is of the FAT32 fromat. running on a WinXP pro system.
Something, what I don't know has happened. The other day I start my system.
The scandisk screen apprears asking me to cancel a check disk of Drive E:
I let it run. Now it did recover some bad files, I guess put them back together.

But now I can't read anything from the disk. Win Explorer shows the disk as being 40% free.
XP's check disk show's no problems.

Is there help for this? Or perhaps software file recoverery programs that I could use?
I really would like to get my old files back.

TIA
Neil
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
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If you had scandisk keep a record of its changes, they can be reversed. Just run scandisk from the command line and look at the options. Otherwise you may need to use some data recovery program like R-Studio from r-tt.com .
.bh.

 

NokiaDude

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2002
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NTFS: Faster, more reliable, more secure.
FAT32: Slow, "dumb", easily corrupted.

NTFS is teh winnar yo!!!
 

Ken90630

Golden Member
Mar 6, 2004
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Don't forget: Windows XP has a go-back feature whereby you can restore all your data and programs to the way they were on a certain date. (I forget what it's called exactly -- is it "System Restore" or something like that?) Just pick the day before you started having this problem and send your system back to that day. You will, of course, lose anything you've saved since then, but that may be preferable to this new problem. (And you could always save any newly created files to a CD or Zip or jump drive or something first , then send the system back, then re-load the new files once you've restored the system. Got all that?)

This is all assuming, of course, that your HD isn't broken or something more serious hasn't gone wrong. Your data is more than likely still there -- it's just a matter of retrieving it.

Probably wouldn't hurt to do a disk de-frag while you're at it too.

Ken

PS: If you don't mind my asking, why would you wanna run XP with a FAT-32 file system? NTFS is better by leaps & bounds.
 

Imdmn04

Platinum Member
Jan 28, 2002
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Originally posted by: NokiaDude
NTFS: Faster, more reliable, more secure.
FAT32: Slow, "dumb", easily corrupted.

NTFS is teh winnar yo!!!

You are kidding right? NTFS might be reliable and secure, but FAT32 is way faster than NTFS that its not even funny. I have done many benchmarks comparing FAT32 and NTFS using the same drive, FAT32 is like 40 percent faster.



 

AndyHui

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Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Imdmn04
You are kidding right? NTFS might be reliable and secure, but FAT32 is way faster than NTFS that its not even funny. I have done many benchmarks comparing FAT32 and NTFS using the same drive, FAT32 is like 40 percent faster.
Try your benchmarks again when you have 20,000+ files on your partition.

 

Imdmn04

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Jan 28, 2002
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To answer the OP's question, in my experience usually a ntfs formatted bootdrive with XP will not see fat32 drives. But fat32 bootdrives can see ntfs disks. Why? because msft wants everybody to use ntfs as it is more reliable and secure.

What u can do is use a data copy software from maxtor or WD(it should come bundled with a retail hd), and use that to boot from dos, and use the software to copy the info on the old drive to the new one.
 

AndyHui

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my experience usually a ntfs formatted bootdrive with XP will not see fat32 drives. But fat32 bootdrives can see ntfs disks
This is incorrect.

Drives don't "see" other drives. It's all the operating system. The partition format has nothing to do with how another partition is accessed.
 

Imdmn04

Platinum Member
Jan 28, 2002
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Originally posted by: AndyHui
Originally posted by: Imdmn04
You are kidding right? NTFS might be reliable and secure, but FAT32 is way faster than NTFS that its not even funny. I have done many benchmarks comparing FAT32 and NTFS using the same drive, FAT32 is like 40 percent faster.
Try your benchmarks again when you have 20,000+ files on your partition.

Well the windows folder alone has about 10000+ files, and program files folder is another 10000 files, so that makes my machine have at least 20000 files. my results are produced after a defrag if that skews anything.
 

AndyHui

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Try this test:

Have 10000 files in a folder on a FAT32 partition and an NTFS partition. Random sizes, or all 0 size. Doesn't matter. Go into that folder and delete all of them at one go. See which partition takes longer.
 

Pariah

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Apr 16, 2000
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NTFS is superior to FAT32 is almost every way, but speed isn't one of them. It may be better at random activities, but in everyday things like file copying, NTFS isn't going to be any faster than FAT32. Conversely, FAT32 is not 40% faster than NTFS at anything either.
 

Imdmn04

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Jan 28, 2002
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Originally posted by: AndyHui
my experience usually a ntfs formatted bootdrive with XP will not see fat32 drives. But fat32 bootdrives can see ntfs disks
This is incorrect.

Drives don't "see" other drives. It's all the operating system. The partition format has nothing to do with how another partition is accessed.


Ok i might be incorrect in technicalities and my wording, but in acutal practice what i stated is true, at least from my experience. I have tried numerous fat32 drives with WinXP installed on a NTFS formatted boot drive, it just simply wont detect or "see" it while in windows, but as soon as I format the same bootdrive into fat32 and install WinXP, it will magically see all the fat32 drives. I also dont think its just my particular machine that is doing this, couple of friends have raised the same question about not "seeing" their fat32 drives when they switched from fat32 to NTFS on thier boot drive through a reformat and after installing XP, the fat32 drives could not be seen either. So they had to reformat again back into fat32 for the boot drive and now XP recognizes those fat32 drives again.
 

Pariah

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Apr 16, 2000
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The file system on your boot drive has no bearing on whether or not the OS recognizes the other drives in the system. What you're describing should not happen for the reasons you are describing. There is no configuration that I am aware of that will make FAT32 drives unreadable in WinXP by default beyond disc corruption.
 

Imdmn04

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Jan 28, 2002
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Originally posted by: Pariah
The file system on your boot drive has no bearing on whether or not the OS recognizes the other drives in the system. What you're describing should not happen for the reasons you are describing. There is no configuration that I am aware of that will make FAT32 drives unreadable in WinXP by default beyond disc corruption.

Yes this should not happen in theory since I think what you are stating is true, that the boot drive has no bearing on whether or not the OS recognizes the other drives in the system. This is why I think this is some sort of ploy by msft trying to get people to get rid of their fat32 file systems. Believe me, when i first made my boot drive ntfs, i tried everything that i could trying to get winXP to see my fat32 drives other than reformatting. I was in disbelief because this setup has worked under win2000. As a last resort after trying everything, I finally formatted back to fat32 for the boot drive and it somehow worked. I was thinking exactly what you guys are saying: wtf does the file system of the boot drive has to do with seeing its other drives? Well I didnt care much after that as long as it worked, from then on, this weired occurance was further confirmed by my friends wondering wtf is going on when their fat32 drives has disappered after changing the boot drive from fat32 to ntfs on WinXP.
 

Pariah

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Apr 16, 2000
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I have never encountered this problem nor even heard of it occuring until you brought it up in this thread, so maybe you're all using the same warezed copy that has a bug in it. Seriously, it is definitely not some ploy by MS, which wouldn't make any sense in the slightest. MS prevents you from creating FAT32 partitions above 32GB in WinXP which makes sense, as NTFS is the way to go in such situations, but preventing you from reading another windows based drive that's already been created and is compatible with the OS is simply stupid, and not something MS would do. You and your friends are misdiagnosing whatever problem you are having.
 

AndyHui

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Oct 9, 1999
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I have never encountered this problem with NTFS boot drives either.
 

Imdmn04

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Jan 28, 2002
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Originally posted by: Pariah
I have never encountered this problem nor even heard of it occuring until you brought it up in this thread, so maybe you're all using the same warezed copy that has a bug in it. Seriously, it is definitely not some ploy by MS, which wouldn't make any sense in the slightest. MS prevents you from creating FAT32 partitions above 32GB in WinXP which makes sense, as NTFS is the way to go in such situations, but preventing you from reading another windows based drive that's already been created and is compatible with the OS is simply stupid, and not something MS would do. You and your friends are misdiagnosing whatever problem you are having.

Just because you have never seen such problems doesnt mean I'm using a pirated copy of windows. Objectively speaking, I'm simply stating what I have experienced and just because you havent experienced it doesnt mean that a problem doesnt exist. Then again just because I'm experiencing this problem doesnt really mean it is a problem, it might simply be certain configuration glitches with certain machines. Nonetheless I was just letting the OP know what I have experienced, which might or might not help him troubleshoot his problems.
 

AndyHui

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I have tried numerous fat32 drives with WinXP installed on a NTFS formatted boot drive, it just simply wont detect or "see" it while in windows
I think I know what you are talking about. There are certain situations where you need to "import" the disk partitions using the Disk Manager for Windows XP to recognise them. Try that. You won't need to reformat drives.
 

thuffner3

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Nov 26, 2003
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Ok, Now that I've waded through all the back and forth talk about Fat32 -v- NTFS. I should have renamed the header. LOL.

Anyway. The hard-drive in question is not a boot drive. It is a slave on the secondary IDE controller.
I put it in because it did have info I only needed from time to time, but needed all the same. It was only really meant to be sort-of a back up drive in the event of system failure.

When I request a command prompt from with-in Win Xp I still see no files. The drive is still showing 40% free space.

Can I use my hard disk installer (Maxtor) to get acces to this disk?
TIA
Neil
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
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Perhaps you got so caught up in the FAT vs NTFS that you failed to read your first reply. It's all right there. Either hope that Scandisk can reverse its mess (unlikely) or use a recovery program to try and recover the data.
. The Maxtor disk can do neither.
.bh.
 

AndyHui

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member<br>AT FAQ M
Oct 9, 1999
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thuffner3: sorry to get the thread a little off-topic. As for your problem, it looks like you have a corrupted file allocation table. See if you can find the results of the check in the Event Viewer to see what the chkdsk did.

Bring up the command prompt and type dir /s to see if there is anything at all on the drive. You can start work from there. Otherwise, you may need some file recovery tools like Easy Recovery Pro or something similar.

As zepper says, this issue is not related to FAT32 and NTFS.
 

DannyBoy

Diamond Member
Nov 27, 2002
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www.danj.me
Originally posted by: Imdmn04
Originally posted by: NokiaDude
NTFS: Faster, more reliable, more secure.
FAT32: Slow, "dumb", easily corrupted.

NTFS is teh winnar yo!!!

You are kidding right? NTFS might be reliable and secure, but FAT32 is way faster than NTFS that its not even funny. I have done many benchmarks comparing FAT32 and NTFS using the same drive, FAT32 is like 40 percent faster.


You know nothing.

Please backup this statement.

If you do not I shall continue to consider you a tool.
 

thuffner3

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Nov 26, 2003
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Well gentlemen, Not being entirerly computer literate.
I couldn't find any real reason why my files were hiding.
Yes the file allacation table had been corrupted (somehow)
I did pay for and download (GetDataBack) Very inexpensive, considering spending further time trying to get this info back.
I do really appreciate all the posts and replies.
I have now retrieved all the files, and am currently formatting to NTFS.

Thanks be to one and all.

Peace
Neil