NTFS vs FAT 32 on dual booting system

[Joels]

I'm about to get a new PC with a 40GB drive and was thinking which OS to install and how to partition the drive. This isn't gonna be a gaming PC, more for heavy graphics (Photoshop 6, Flash, Freehand etc...) so I need an OS that's fast and stable. I'm not sure that Win2K will work with all my apps so I'd like to dual boot Win98Se and Win2K.

I thought I'd initially install Win98SE in a small partition (maybe 2GB) and then install Win2k on almost all of the remaining space. I really don't won't to overdo the amount of partitions as the person using the PC doesn't want to hassle with this.

My questions are:

1. Is it wise to have such a large second partition? Won't defragging take forever?

2. Is it ok to install Win2K to a FAT32 partition (for file sharing purposes with Win98) or will I not be taking full advantage of the speed of Win2K if I don't use NTFS?

3. If I dual boot win98 and win2k and later decide to remove win98, is this possible?


Thanks for any advice you may have.

 

[metallibloke]

1. If i were you, i'd have my first partition as 4Gb, then maybe a 30Gb w2k partition and the rest as a personal data partition. You've got 40Gb to play with, it seems a little silly just to have a 2Gb partition, but thats just me. Defragging will take forever, on such a large drive, if it is severely fragged in the first place.

2. You can install w2k on fat32 but you wont be getting all the security benefits. However, if you need to share files between w98 and w2k then you have little choice.

3. You can remove w98 after installing w2k. You'd just have to be careful that you didnt screw up w2k (like i did once!), but removing it isnt difficult.

 

[jaywallen]

You do want to make the Win98SE partition large enough for the OS AND the applications you'll be installing under it. Two gigs might be a bit small for that purpose. And you don't want to cramp either of the OS partitions, anyway. There's no reason why you can't set Win98SE up to use FAT32 and W2K to use NTFS. However, if you must access the same data from both Win98SE and W2K, you may wish to make a D: partition that was FAT32 for the shared data and place the W2K installation on an NTFS E: partition. (You don't want Win98SE having to look for a FAT32 partition that exists out beyond an NTFS partition that it can't see. There are third party tricks for dealing with this issue, but I heartily recommend avoiding them.) Data which must be kept secure can be kept on an NTFS partition, either the same one as the W2K installation partition or on a separate data partition. If you use this methodology the user's data is on a separate partition (or partitions) that can be defragged more efficiently and easily, without involving defragging of the OS partitions. Unless you install / uninstall a lot, the OS partitions shouldn't fragment too rapidly -- after the initial setup, that is. Right after the initial installation of OS and apps, however, the OS partitions will probably be in pretty sorry shape, file-fragmentation-wise.

Dual booting can be fun on a hobby machine or on a testing machine, but I try to avoid it on production machines. Maintenance and updates on a multiboot machine are a lot more time-consuming than they are on a single-OS machine. Are you certain that this user has irreplaceable apps that won't run under W2K?

Regards,
Jim

 

[igiveup]

I want to second what Jay said. You really have quite a bit of hard drive space here so don't skimp on the 98 partition. I would go with 4 or 6 GB. I would question why you want to run 98 at all anyways since the applications you mention in your post should run just fine under Windows 2000. Just make sure that the versions you have were made to run on at least windows NT 4.0. These are all Commecial grade graphics programs so I would be supprised if there weren't at least a patch for the prior release.

Just to be safe, check the vendors support site. They should have compatiblity updates or news releases there.

Go with Windows 2000 Pro.

 

[Joels]

Thanks guys for replying. Actually, I think I may actually take Jim's final advise and install Win2K only. It appears that all my apps will run on Win2K so I guess there's no point in messing around with Win98SE. Does anyone see any reason why I should dual boot to Win98SE too? Are there apps that may not run in Win2K?

I really don't need any security on this drive. It's used at home and not in an office environment, by one user, without being connected to a network so I guess Fat32 should be fine, or is there any other reason why I should be using NTFS? Is it that much more reliable or faster?

What about the size of partitions? How large would you recommend making each partition without limiting convenience but speeding up defrag time?

Thanks again for all your help.

 

[AndyHui]

NTFS is more reliable, but not necessarily faster. In general, Win2K's disk access algorithm is a bit different to Win9x's, so you will get far less fragmented files, so time spent defragging is not really an issue (and it wouldn't be an important one anyway).

Remember that you won't be able to access an NTFS partition if Win2K goes down and you use a Win9x bootdisk to start the computer.

 

[igiveup]

Thats why you boot from the CD and use the Recovery Console. Make sure you have an ERD (Emergency Repair Disk) which can be made using the Backup Utility found in System Tools.

 

[Shuja]

I have dual booting with 20 GB HDD. First partition is off course 2GB, FAT 32 and OS on it WINDOWS 98. On second Partition I keep all programmes installed (i.e. when any appliaction software ask to change the default path I change it to D:\---. So as to keep files on C minimum. My third partiton is 4GB NTFS and I have installed WIN 2K over it. remaining space (Fourth partiton) is FAT 32. So in my opinion this is the best configuration. You can skip defrag and scandisk on non system or programmes partition (Not required frequently) so keeping it big in size will not create any problem. Boot partition C must be kept minmum for optimum performance of the system. There is no problem keeping dual or multiple booting. WIN98 and WIN 2K have there on pros and cos. Some older application definitly will not run properly on win 2k so it is very good practice to keep dual booting. Further using net on NTFS is always good for security reasons.