NTFS or FAT32

[sparkle]

Installin Win 2000 pro. Should I go w/NTFS or FAT32? I will prolly do NTFS, is there any drawbacks to doing so?

 

[LAUST]

How big is the drive your installing on and do you want to conserve space or is speed more important?

 

[sparkle]

30GB ATA100, speed is kinda important. will not be doing a dual boot

 

[DaveJ]

NTFS, no question... there's about a 5% performance hit over FAT32, but you won't notice it. NTFS is much more robust and will recover more easily if your system crashes. The disadvantage (at least to me) is that you can't get into DOS to fix anything, unless you have the NTFS DOS drivers...

Dave

 

Are NTFS and FAT32 files compatible?

 

[sparkle]

Ok, NTFS is what is setting up right now... I was pretty sure that was the way I wanted to go.

Thanks all!

 

[tkim]

well, if you dual boot with win 98, you wont be able to see ntfs partitions. this is kind of a bottle neck but its also good security.

 

[tkim]

also, not compatible. atleast both ways. ntfs can see fat but fat cant see ntfs.

 

[coopa]

i went with fat32 on my duel boot.

PS im gunna be microsoft certified pro pretty soon!! (in windows 2000 pro that is.)

 

[mundania]

i've always thought fat couldn't see ntfs..but i networked my win2k pro machine with a friend's win98 machine.. and she could see all my files just fine?

 

[tkim]

you'll learn all about this stuff if you take a class and read up on the books. i took a lot of classes for the nt4 track. you will learn all the pros and cons for fat and ntfs...its all pretty cool. good luck!

 

[divinemartyr]

You actually can see/use files from NTFS via FAT32 but as far as functionality is concerned, it's a bit more limited going between the 2. For example, if you burn your mp3's to CD and you're using NTFS, you can later use those files in a FAT32 environment. NTFS is the performance way to go.

dm

 

[tkim]

well from my experience, (with nt4) fat couldn't see ntfs. i'm not sure of win200.

 

[LAUST]

Win 2000 can see FAT FAT32 and NTFS and it finally has a Defrag utility built in for that FARCE about NTFS fragmentation.

The thing I still hate about NTFS is you can't boot from a MS-DOS floppy to save anything manually if you have to, NTFS-DOS is an available program but it's a hassle

 

[virtuamike]

If you're going NTFS make sure you don't encrypt the file system, makes it impossible to recover if you reinstall the OS (the encryption algorith goes by a timestamp generated during OS install). I'd definatly go with NTFS w/ Win2K. For some reason it can't defrag FAT32 too well, does fine with FAT16 though.

NTFS file partitions can be seen via network shares because viewing them is not dependent upon file format. Regardless if you're running FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, you can access and browse filesystems. I even have UNIX filesystems mapped as network drives on my NT4 system.

Win2K can see NTFS, FAT32, and FAT16 local partitions. NT4 can only see NTFS and FAT16. Win9x can see FAT16 and FAT32. Windows 3.1 restricted to FAT16. Not sure about the older ones. Again this is for local partitions, not network shares.

Furthermore NTFS, FAT32, and FAT16 only refer to discs, not CD's. CD's are formatted differently, which is why you can put a CD in a Mac, PC, or UNIX box and still read it. Hopes this clears things up.

 

[tkim]

virtuamike, you are so right. over a network its ok....damni forgot that. thanks!!

i mean the fat seeing the ntfs thing!!

 

[tkim]

virtuamike, you are so right. over a network its ok....damni forgot that. thanks!!

i mean the fat seeing the ntfs thing!!

 

[Plantanthera]

Win 9x/ME - FAT, FAT32
Win NT4 - FAT, NTFS (NTFS for NT4)
Win2k - FAT, FAT32, NTFS (both version: original NTFS for NT4 & the enhanced version NTFS for NT5/Win2k)

It all depend on what you use your computer for, but if you want security then NTFS, but for home use you might want to use FAT32, because DOS will work with it (NTFS-DOS is a poor implementation of DOS, because it lack many great DOS ultilities & command). To recover from a crash in wn2k, you have to use the 4 recover disk that take 15 minutes to make, and 15 minutes to boot your system. If you don't have a curent version of the recover disk then FDISK & reformat is needed if your HDD is partion with NTFS. Because, there isn't away to brake into the NTFS security to width draw data from NTFS partion.