I feel kinda silly asking this one...

[CdnAtWork]

I'm doing a fresh install of WinXP on a Maxtor Atlas15k - 36GB and i've always used fat32 (i've always set up a 20 partition for the os/programs) , but should I change to NTFS? and what the heck is NTFS5??

Just some quick and dirty answers for this one, Maybe with 1 or 2 main reasons why i should go with either....

Thanks Folks!!!
Cdn

 

[DrJeff]

Some quick and dirty...

NTFS is more efficient with disk space with small clusters. More secure if you enable the security features. Info on each file is stored with the file, so recovery from disaster not dependent upon finding a table or directory intact.

FAT32 stores a backup directory or table for recovery purposes. The HD recovery guy I have worked with says FAT32 would be a much quicker recovery for him. But again that assumes some disaster strikes your drive. Fat32 less efficient on file space if you have a bunch of small files. Is missing the possible security you could have with NTFS. A plus for FAT32 is it's backward compatibility with OSes less than XP/NT/2000, if you have a mixture onsite.

Who's next to chime in?

 

[Cerb]

NTFS. Is there any reason to use FAT32 at all anymore? I gave up FAT32 around '98!
comparison

 

[CdnAtWork]

quick and painless. as always, you guys rock! I'm not concerned with data loss as i regularly backup important data, and make images with Acronis True image.

Thanks Folks!!
Cdn

 

[Skiddex]

the major switching over factor for me was the fact that NTFS supports files larger than 4 gigs (video files).

 

[n0cmonkey]

NTFS vs FAT32 FAQ.

There is no reason to use FAT32 anymore.

 

[drag]

Fat32 teh sux.

If you have a choice between NTFS vs Fat32, go for NTFS 95% of the time. It's pretty much superior in every conceivable way.

 

[Psych]

BTW, NTFS5 is just the newer version of NTFS that came out with Windows 2000 (might be XP). It has a host of new features, like encryption and such. The only problem with NTFS is the MFT issues, and the fact that it's slower than FAT32 on small drives.

EDIT: Um, I guess you knew that already. Sorry.

 

[n7]

That's an awesome link showing the differences.
*adds to faves*

 

[glugglug]

Advantages of FAT32:

Tends not to fragment nearly as much, especially on disks that are more than half full. (Really Sad that NTFS fragments so badly when it is supposed to not need defragging as a selling point. Basically, the measures they take to avoid fragmentation are not well thought out and backfire if you use the majority of your disk space, or if you create and delete thousands of temp files frequently.)

Has much better defragging tools available in case you do end up getting it fragged. The defragging tools which work with both filesystems tend to work faster AND do a much better job with FAT32. This is compounded by the fact that the defragging API built into Win2K and WinXP and used by ALL NTFS defraggers is bugged when dealing with compressed files, causing the defraggers to frequently get errors working with those files and skip them. (The Microsoft provided defrag API is the only safe way to defrag NTFS while windows is booted)

Faster in the vast majority of real world situations (even ignoring fragmentation). In theory NTFS is faster for large directories because it does a b-tree search to find a file rather than a sequential search through the directory entries, but in practice, this more complex directory structure leads to more directory blocks having to be loaded in and more complex logic to search them, and FAT32's linear slowdown due to sequential search doesn't bring it down to NTFS speed until the number of files in a single directory is in the tens of thousands. The lack of journaling and simplicity from not having security permissions also speeds it up. (Do any recovery utils actually make use of NTFS journaling?)

Can use the disk from Win98

Disadvantages of FAT32:

Larger cluster size by default. With partition magic or similar util you can bypass this limitation. At that small drive size, the extra RAM that will be used to keep track of the FAT table if you override that cluster size and use 4K instead like NTFS would by default is about 35MB. With larger drives it becomes a bigger issue

No NTFS file compression and/or encryption.

No advanced features like sparse files and symbolic links (almost nothing uses either of these anyway).

No security permissions on a file or directory basis. (Not used by most home users, but a big deal for a server).

Individual files limited to 4GB.

Individual files more than 200MB or so are very slightly slower to work with due to having to search through the ugly linked list that is the FAT table, and due to hitting swap sooner from FAT memory consumption.

NTFS on the boot partition is required to run some standard Microsoft services, most notably an Active Directory server is required to boot off NTFS.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Sounds like NTFS wins in that comparison too.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Sounds like NTFS wins in that comparison too.

Yeah, FAT32 won't fit disk images anymore

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: DrJeff
Some quick and dirty...

NTFS is more efficient with disk space with small clusters. More secure if you enable the security features. Info on each file is stored with the file, so recovery from disaster not dependent upon finding a table or directory intact.

FAT32 stores a backup directory or table for recovery purposes. The HD recovery guy I have worked with says FAT32 would be a much quicker recovery for him. But again that assumes some disaster strikes your drive. Fat32 less efficient on file space if you have a bunch of small files. Is missing the possible security you could have with NTFS. A plus for FAT32 is it's backward compatibility with OSes less than XP/NT/2000, if you have a mixture onsite.

Who's next to chime in?

I would have to actually side with FAT32 in this debate. I've had to deal with various data-corruption/file-recovery issues, both on my drives and on other's, in the past, and FAT32 is such a brain-dead-simple filesystem to deal with, it makes it MUCH easier to do recovery work on by hand, using Norton DiskEdit for DOS.

NTFS is complex, proprietary (!), and while it may offer addtional security measures over FAT32, very rarely does anyone use those features in practice (server installations are the exception - for servers, I would only use NTFS).

FAT32 is open (?), standard, interoperable, and simple to fix manually, when things go wrong.

Both FAT32 and NTFS have "fat tables" to deal with, NTFS's is called the MFT, but both are critical to both respective filesystem's operations, and both filesystems fragment.

Often, I see that MS has found some new bug or security issue in the NTFS.SYS driver, probably due to it's inherent complexity. I don't recall any fixes or issues in the last few years with their FASTFAT.SYS driver.

I personally prefer simplicity and open-ness, other's priorities may differ. The lack of symbolic-link support under W2K/XP running on FAT32 volumes is about the only functionality that I really would like to see.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
I would have to actually side with FAT32 in this debate. I've had to deal with various data-corruption/file-recovery issues, both on my drives and on other's, in the past, and FAT32 is such a brain-dead-simple filesystem to deal with, it makes it MUCH easier to do recovery work on by hand, using Norton DiskEdit for DOS.

With good backups, this isn't typically an issue. Although I will agree that fat32 is brain-dead.

NTFS is complex, proprietary (!), and while it may offer addtional security measures over FAT32, very rarely does anyone use those features in practice (server installations are the exception - for servers, I would only use NTFS).

They should be used. They're simple to understand, simple to impliment, and can do a world of good. Unless you run as administrator 24/7, which is just dumb.

FAT32 is open (?), standard, interoperable, and simple to fix manually, when things go wrong.

Microsoft owns patents on fat32, and supposedly they are enforcing them. That isn't open.

With the added benefits of NTFS, there is less chance for things to "just go wrong."

Both FAT32 and NTFS have "fat tables" to deal with, NTFS's is called the MFT, but both are critical to both respective filesystem's operations, and both filesystems fragment.

Often, I see that MS has found some new bug or security issue in the NTFS.SYS driver, probably due to it's inherent complexity. I don't recall any fixes or issues in the last few years with their FASTFAT.SYS driver.

fat32 is dead, why continue updating it? Plus, it has been in use for quite a while now. Plenty of time to work out most of the big bugs. If they stopped messing so much with NTFS, it wouldn't require so much patching either...

I personally prefer simplicity and open-ness, other's priorities may differ. The lack of symbolic-link support under W2K/XP running on FAT32 volumes is about the only functionality that I really would like to see.

I prefer simplicity too. I can get increased stability, security, and privacy using NTFS. Sounds pretty simple to me.