NTFS vs. FAT32 for reliability and restorability.

[elkinm]

I am sure this has been asked before but this is a little different.

I am building a system for a friend of mine who is not as good with computer so this system needs to simply run and run well.

I use FAT32 as sometimes I have problems like a critical file destroyed by scandisk and since I have no access to my NTFS files without another NTFS compatible system compared to using boot disks and old programs to view transfer my files.

The question is if NTFS is that much more reliable with internal file integrity that it would not have dead system files?

My friend would not be able to recover a system and I would not have that much time to do it for him so I need to avoid the problem.

Since scandisk has been my primary source of problems, I can disable it at boot but I don't want to do this. Also, can scandisk repair NTFS files correctly or is it the same, if a file is corrupted it may as well be destroyed.

Thanks

 

[NightCrawler]

This horse is dead.....USE NTFS !!!!!!!!

It's much much much more reliable !!!

 

[AndyHui]

NTFS is a journalling file system. No competition from FAT32. NTFS is a lot more reliable.

 

[spyordie007]

My friend would not be able to recover a system

NTFS is readable by any windows NT 4+ client or even Linux, the only clients that cant read it are 9.x and DOS and you can get around that by running ntfs drivers for DOS/9.x

 

[elkinm]

I went with NTFS.

The system is definitely running nice and fast but then it also had a nice and empty hard drive.

Just wondering, how is NTFS less prone to corruption, does it have some built in ECC to help recover from failures?

And can the XP scandisk properly repair damaged files or should I still disable it just incase, or maybe use an alternate program?

 

[Nothinman]

NTFS is no less prone to data corruption, meaning that if you have bad memory or a funky cable or something your data is still in jeopardy. But it's journaled so that in the case of a dirty unmount the journal can be replayed to get the filesytem back into a consistent state instead of a full chkdsk being run. Strangely though MS even f'd this up and chkdsk still runs occasionally.

For recovery I would built a WinPE CD with Bart's PE Builder becase the Recovery Console MS puts on the Windows install CDs is practically worthless.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: elkinm


Since scandisk has been my primary source of problems, I can disable it at boot but I don't want to do this.

Scandisk is not the primary source of your problems. Whatever is corrupting your files and causing scandisk to run is. That's kinda like installing antivirus software, finding viruses everywhere and saying the antivirus software caused it.

 

[elkinm]

Not exactly, it is like a virus program telling you there is a virus in some file and destroying when there is no virus. I don't have many virus miss hits but sometimes they happen, but fortunately my virus program:
1, does not destroy the file after detecting a possible virus.
2, if it does something it backs it up the original.
3 and if it does repair it then it usually works, ( or at least I have not seen a corrupt successful repair.)

Now if the file works fine, I run a scandisk, it detects this file having some problem, after fix file is dead no backup available.
I know it is good, as if I cancel an auto scandisk and check the file is working, then run scandisk then it is not working.

Now real corrupt files that really don't work are detected by scandisk just the same, but I don't need scandisk to find them.

I don't know if it is possible to change the default scandisk to actually repair or at least back up a file before doing something, but I remember a time long ago when a repair did not equal delete.

As far a the cause, it is an accidental reset, power outage (which occurred more often lately?) and an actual crash, and in most cases an error is still rare.

So I am guessing or hoping that XP may be able to repair an NTFS file even if FAT is out of the question.

Also, can someone maybe give a list of possible corruption types that scandisk detects and why it can't repair them like older versions?

 

[drag]

If your having files that are just randomly corrupted it's probably something wrong with your hardware.

Scandisk may make them worse when trying to fix it because of the hardware issue your just going ot ruin it worse.

The first thing to check is your IDE cables. Turn off DMA access, also till you figure out what is wrong.

You need to have short, flat, 80 wire IDE cables. Any rounded cables, cables that are longer then spec, crimped or otherwise damaged or screwed up are going to cause you problems.

There is limited data protection built into the ATA spec to protect against data being corrupted over screwed up cables, so people do get away with it because the hardware is generally good quality compared to the stuff that was around when the specifications were developed. They use CRC checks. However that's only for the data packets. Bad or otherwise corrupted instructions comming from your IDE controller will go thru undetected.

So that even if bad data is being found and corrected for you can still have bad information coming from your OS to your harddrive. In that case NTFS isn't going to help you any.

Also the harddrive itself can being screwing up.

Also if your not shutting down correctly or are getting crashes that WILL corrupt your data irregardless of the type of file system you use. NTFS can handle this much better then Fat32, but it can't compinsate for it completely.

If scandisk is comming up after a crash or a bad shutdown then it's the bad shutdown or crash that is causing the problems, not scandisk. Unless scandisk itself is corrupted in some way.

But anyways, if it's just windows BS causing your problems then NTFS is still better. It's just superior to FAT32 in almost every conceivable way. It's faster, has better built in error detection and correction, doesn't fragment as easily, etc etc etc.