Two file system questions: what's this about a FAT32 16Gig barrier? And what advantages are offered by NTFS (5.0)?

[Noriaki]

I was reading somewhere that if you make a FAT32 partition bigger than ~16Gig nasty things happen...is this true? And exactly what it is that happens?


Also what advantages does NTFS 5.0 offer over FAT32?

I use my machine for Word/IE/Games and some programming occassionally (though most of that is done on the servers at work/school and I just need a telnet client).

 

[Dulanic]

NTFS... Stability... Speed... Security... That about sums it up... its just a ton better Hell it even allows compresion on one folder... I keep all my download folders compressed.

 

[rahvin]

Win2k won't let you create big FAT32 partitions. (I thought the limit was 30gigs) Win98 will though! (And there aren't any major dissadvantages)

 

[Rogue]

FAT32's 32-bit addressing system will allow for a maximum, single file size of 4GB. NTFS however allows for file sizes to reach up to 16EB (Exabytes) for a single file or something like that. Here are a few knowledge base articles that may help:

Limitation of FAT32 on Win2k

Description of FAT32 Filesystem

 

[Need4Speed]

http://www.nextlev.com/Windows/Tech/ntfs.htm
http://www.elementkjournals.com/ntp/9901/ntp9911.htm
http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=2744

Happy Reading...

One of the key points I would like to point out is the multitasking capability of NTFS vs FAT. Lets assume your hard disk has to read 3 pieces of data from 3 different locations on the disk. Further, lets say that the data is stored on track 1, track 9, and track 3, and is requeste din that order. FAT partitions will grab the data in this order, while NTFS is "smart" enought to sat "I can grab track 1, and on the way to track 9, i can also grab track 3". In otherwords, it grabs the data in the order that it is stored, making it much more efficient (disk read head will not have to jump all over) and much faster. Tie this in with a good SCSI setup, and its killer.