If you were to install Win NT server can you think of any reason why..

Soulbane

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Jun 21, 2001
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you would make the boot partition FAT and not NTFS?

I ran into a few servers here at my new place of employment and am trying to figure out why they are FAT and not NTFS. It's not like there is any funky software on them that demands FAT.

Wouldn't making it FAT kill the servers performance? Or wait.. FAT is faster and NTFS is for security? But still I don't get why they are set up this way.

Any clue?
 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
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hehehehehe....What kind of boxes are they?

I ask the same question about our workstations. Freaking Dell installs NT4 on FAT16 and makes all the partitions FAT16. Talk about cluster slack, it think the clusters are about 64k big. Not exactly sure why they do that, but I don't like it. IMO all servers should be NTFS with 4k clusters.
 

Soulbane

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Jun 21, 2001
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Ya these are all Dells too with NT 4. I have a feeling the guy I replaced was doing something "funky". Damn paper MCSE's.

Basic hardware in them are P3 with 256 ram with RAID 5 config. One runs exchange, ones file&print and another is for automation.

 

Woodie

Platinum Member
Mar 27, 2001
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The old line was: "install it on fat so you can recover it. If you do NTFS, you can't boot to DOS and recover blah blah..."

Baloney. NTFS DOS was created shortly after. We always build all NT Servers (>1500) with NTFS exclusively. Not desirable to run it on FAT! (Performance, fragmentation, space utilization....)

--Woodie
 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
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LMAO The old line was: "install it on fat so you can recover it.

Who the hell has a server without a tape backup system! hehehehehe :D
 

Timothy

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Dec 25, 2000
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Speaking as a person who has installed a lot of NT4, I always put the OS on a FAT partition with NO shares on that partition. My bacon (and my clients) have been saved many a time by the ability to just boot to DOS, delete a file and boot to a happy OS. As a matter of fact, I usually make the box a dual-boot (DOS & NT) to make it even easier to get to a DOS prompt.

Yes, I know it's possible with third-party utilities to get onto an NTFS disk, but it's so simple to just boot to DOS.

Tim
 

bozo1

Diamond Member
May 21, 2001
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There were some people running around a few years ago recommending putting your swapfile on a Fat16 partition as it was supposedly faster. Thorough testing by me and number of other people pooh-poohed that idea but I still hear people recommending it.