Me and a buddy can't decide which one is faster then the other, I think NTFS but he says there really isn't much of a difference except for larger disk support and dual boot, but not speed.
how much of a difference in speed is there between Fat32 and ntfs on windows XP.
- Thread starter Ademi99
- Start date
In most cases FAT32 is faster, but lots of space is wasted by the large cluster size.
You can keep small clusters on FAT32 by formatting with partition magic or similar utility (actually I think XP might even allow you to format them 4K or smaller), but this will result in a large FAT table that consumes a lot of your RAM. Which will slow your system down because you will swap more.
You can keep small clusters on FAT32 by formatting with partition magic or similar utility (actually I think XP might even allow you to format them 4K or smaller), but this will result in a large FAT table that consumes a lot of your RAM. Which will slow your system down because you will swap more.
So your saying that NTFS is faster then, you saying two different things, you said one is faster FAT32, but after you use enough disk space the FAT32 slows down because of memory times. So which one is overall better or are they both pretty much the same.
FAT32 being faster has nothing to do with using up the disk. Actually, if anything, the gap widens as the disk fills up because NTFS gets more fragmented and is harder to defragment (and the built in windows defragger becomes basically useless if you fill the disk up until you get it back to 50% free -- full then freeing 20% is actually a lot different from just never using the last 20% to begin with) -- if you use O&O defrag this isn't such an issue.
So it sounds like they both have there strengths and there weaknesses but when it comes down to it, you just need to know what you are going to use the computer for. Question which one would be better for a gaming box, 80% gaming 10% music video and 10% internet browsing, which file system would you recommend.
for me, just go for ntfs. there's no point going back to FAT32.
the difference in speed is rather minimal. just get more ram.
the difference in speed is rather minimal. just get more ram.
I've sort of taken a cue from linux and I make a swap partition for my windows installation.
In terms of sheer swap performance, disregarding wasted space, which file system is faster?
In terms of sheer swap performance, disregarding wasted space, which file system is faster?
FAT32 will bog down badly when you have directories with huge numbers of files/directories in them, NTFS is far more scalable, and just all-around better with the security and stability enhancements over FAT32.
This used to be asked very frequently, and aside from a very few people who insist on using technology from the 80's(and yes I know some old stuff is actually still good, FATxx is not one of them however), the general feeling is that NTFS is superior in almost every case, the most common exception being dualbooting.
Do a search of the posts in OS and you'll probably find a $hitload of threads on the subject.
This used to be asked very frequently, and aside from a very few people who insist on using technology from the 80's(and yes I know some old stuff is actually still good, FATxx is not one of them however), the general feeling is that NTFS is superior in almost every case, the most common exception being dualbooting.
Do a search of the posts in OS and you'll probably find a $hitload of threads on the subject.
Define "huge numbers of files/directories".
Directories with 10000 files still are faster in FAT32. At what point is the crossover? Certainly 10000 files in a single directory (not including subfolders) is past what an average user will reach....
NTFS allows a lot more options, like file compression, file/directory level security, encryption, sparse files, and mount points (and it's required for certain Microsoft components, like Active Directory). It also doesn't have the RAM overhead of the FAT table, which will result in less swapping to speed your system up. NTFS is also better for dealing with extremely large files like videos because with FAT when you first open the file it has to search through the linked list in the FAT table to get the list of clusters the file takes, which is a relatively slow process. This linked list manipulation also makes FAT slow at deleting large files. And I don't think FAT32 will even allow a file larger than 4GB. But other than those specific situations, in the real world NTFS is slightly slower, but the difference is minor (unless your drive gets near full and fragmented) and it's probably worth it in case you ever want to use the other features.
Directories with 10000 files still are faster in FAT32. At what point is the crossover? Certainly 10000 files in a single directory (not including subfolders) is past what an average user will reach....
NTFS allows a lot more options, like file compression, file/directory level security, encryption, sparse files, and mount points (and it's required for certain Microsoft components, like Active Directory). It also doesn't have the RAM overhead of the FAT table, which will result in less swapping to speed your system up. NTFS is also better for dealing with extremely large files like videos because with FAT when you first open the file it has to search through the linked list in the FAT table to get the list of clusters the file takes, which is a relatively slow process. This linked list manipulation also makes FAT slow at deleting large files. And I don't think FAT32 will even allow a file larger than 4GB. But other than those specific situations, in the real world NTFS is slightly slower, but the difference is minor (unless your drive gets near full and fragmented) and it's probably worth it in case you ever want to use the other features.
Windows does NOT access the swap file the same way it accesses "normal" files, so the file system you use is
irrelevant.
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