Fresh Install of XP Pro: NTFS vs. FAT32 you tell me?

[thatsright]

Okay once I get all o my new hardware, I will do a fresh Install of XP Pro on a ABIT IC7 MB with a P4c 2.4Ghz CPU. One question I have, is it better to go with the NTFS file system over FAT 32?

I know that its better for security and the like and that its also quicker. But how much quicker over FAT32?

Is it true that when performing defrag operations, its a lot quicker than when your file sys is FAT32? Is disk performance/transfer time any quicker with NTFS? What about games, can they work with NTFS, I thought they could only use FAT32?

Please help me out here. Thanks a lot

 

[Mem]

What about games, can they work with NTFS, I thought they could only use FAT32?

Please help me out here. Thanks a lot

Games work fine in NTFS.


Read
Anandtech`s FAQs on the subject here .

I forgot to say go with NTFS.

 

[mikecel79]

NTFS. The only reason to go to FAT32 is if you are dual booting and need to read the partition from another OS. NTFS is faster and a lot more resilent than FAT. FAT sucks!

 

[SinfulWeeper]

I thought that FAT32 was faster than NTFS?
In either case for better useage I gun NTFS . With todays hard drives you won't see much difference if any in either direction you go.

 

[Nothinman]

I thought that FAT32 was faster than NTFS?

Depends on the case, generally no.

What about games, can they work with NTFS, I thought they could only use FAT32?

The OS accesses the filesystem, not the games. I can run win32 games via Wine in Linux on an XFS partition and they run fine.

 

[drag]

Yep yep. Thats that whole layered effect that is built into computer's OS. The kernel and other system software handles the detail, were all the programs have to do is tell the OS that they want this or that information of off the harddrive, and the OS handles the details. That's how you can take in a network situation take a file from a MAC running hfs+ and copy it to a w2k machine running ntfs and then copy it to a linux box running reisferfs and finally download it onto a dos machine running fat16. It's all just layers of abstractions.

Of course you could run into problems were a program is specificly designed with special code to be optimized with one file system or another, but that is realy rare on a desktop and not something you'll have to worry about.

 

[Joker81]

I have a related question. Is it better to do the Full Format or the Quick Format?

 

[Nothinman]

A full format just checks for bad blocks, if you're sure the drive is ok it's a waste of time.

 

[newuser]

I think I will go with NTFS on my install of Win XP Home

 

[THUGSROOK]

FAT32 is the better choice unless you need file security options.

let the flames begin....

 

[newuser]

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
FAT32 is the better choice unless you need file security options.

let the flames begin....

why?

 

[mikecel79]

He's either trying to start a flame war or he's being sarcastic. NTFS is far superior to FAT32 in ALL respects.

 

[sak]

Man there is no reason to go to FAT...NTFS is the bomb..games now a days are made to be played on XP and 2000 so there should be any excuse as to why one would uses fat...

unless u ahve a dual boot system..and even then..why whould u want to have a dual boot system with crappy window98...or anything b4 2000..??

 

[nutxo]

Originally posted by: sak
Man there is no reason to go to FAT...NTFS is the bomb..games now a days are made to be played on XP and 2000 so there should be any excuse as to why one would uses fat...

unless u ahve a dual boot system..and even then..why whould u want to have a dual boot system with crappy window98...or anything b4 2000..??

ha, i really think what you are stating is a personal preference. XP is okay, its win2k with much crap added. 98se was a very good OS, the BSOD thing was somethign i rarely ever saw so I would have to think that as many installs and builds as I have done that most people having those problems were creating them themselves or were faulty hardware.

Games run MUCH better in win98, video seems to run better, the only reason I run NTFS is for backin up dvd where i need larger than 4gig file size.

If I wanted to be a true power user Id go straight to linux and leave the wannabes like xp out in the cold. (god knows how much bsd was smuggled into it anyways )

rant rant rant rant rant rant on and on

see, now ive confused myself

 

[nutxo]

Originally posted by: sak
Man there is no reason to go to FAT...NTFS is the bomb..games now a days are made to be played on XP and 2000 so there should be any excuse as to why one would uses fat...

unless u ahve a dual boot system..and even then..why whould u want to have a dual boot system with crappy window98...or anything b4 2000..??

Oh yeh, If nothing else i would just not use it because someone referred to it as "da bomb"


ps you seem to have intermittent problems with your y and o keys, probably that da bomb o/s ya have there


and no, xp doesnt run all 9x programs like they were on a 9x system no matter what you do.

 

[dcdomain]

I always go with NTFS for my OS partition and fat32 for all my other partitions/drives for data...

 

[Guga]

Go with NTFS.

Support for compression, encryption, quotas, security.

Even MS put a restriction on XP, if you have hdd bigger than 32gb you can only format it on Windows Explorer. You can't even format it on Disk Management.

NTFS has a little more overhead but is so much better that it doesn't have sense use FAT32 unless you have dual boot with win9x

 

[Guga]

Even MS put a restriction on XP, if you have hdd bigger than 32gb you can only format it on Windows Explorer. You can't even format it on Disk Management.

Forget to mention.. Cannot format with FAT32.. with NTFS you can format it without problems

 

[THUGSROOK]

Originally posted by: newuser

Originally posted by: THUGSROOK
FAT32 is the better choice unless you need file security options.

let the flames begin....

why?

its faster and much easier to deal with.
chances are he doesnt need "Support for compression, encryption, quotas, security" and such anyways.
just cause MS pushes stuff on you doesnt mean you need it.

you can fdisk and format FAT32 using a win98/me boot disk.
id suggest a 8-16gb partition for the OS.

i run Win98se by choice ~ i also own win2kpro and winxp pro but no longer use them.

 

[Sunner]

NTFS is faster than FAT32 in many cases.
FAT32 can be faster, but only mariginally so, while NTFS can be way faster in some other cases(lots and lots of files, huge filesystems, etc).
And security is something everyone can benefit from, including home users, maybe you have two profiles on the computer, isn't it nice knowing that your files are only readable by you and the admin?

As for Win9x, I think MS is doing the Right Thing by pulling support for it, 9x needs to die for the common good.
Im not too fond of Windows in general, but Win2000 is a pretty decent OS, the 9x series is not.

Let's just move on, Win9x is dead, FAT32 lives on only cause it's readable/writable by other OS's, and hence better suited for dual booting, for all other purposes, the NT based OS's and NTFS are supperior.

 

[Guga]

its faster and much easier to deal with.
chances are he doesnt need "Support for compression, encryption, quotas, security" and such anyways.
just cause MS pushes stuff on you doesnt mean you need it.

you can fdisk and format FAT32 using a win98/me boot disk.
id suggest a 8-16gb partition for the OS.

i run Win98se by choice ~ i also own win2kpro and winxp pro but no longer use them.

It's faster... Maybe. on a 4 gb hdd..
With a 40>gb hdd you can't notice the diference.

I'm not discuss here your choice of OS, but 98 can't be compared with xp in anyway.
XP is better than 98 in everything.

And I still insist. If you only have xp FAT should not be used

 

[Nothinman]

FAT is easier to deal with only because of it's simplicity. Normally I consider simplicity a good thing, but when it's a filesystem it only makes the potential for problems greater. FAT is a very fragile filesystem with no journaling, no redundancy and no security. The chance of you losing the entire filesystem with an unclean unmounting is much greater than with NTFS.

NTFS is generally faster, the only thing that might be slower is the initial open() call because of the security checks but even that is only going to add milliseconds here and there.

Let's just move on, Win9x is dead, FAT32 lives on only cause it's readable/writable by other OS's, and hence better suited for dual booting, for all other purposes, the NT based OS's and NTFS are supperior.