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Win XP - need to use NTFS?

S

Slickone

Diamond Member
Seems like I read that in order to be able to use the different profiles, NTFS must be used. Is this true? I was hoping to stay w/ FAT32, but want to be able to have a separate login account that doesn't have certain privilages (can't delete/move files, no access to certain files/folders).

If NTFS is needed, any disadvantages?
 
why do people want to run FAT32 .. seems like you would be happy to get rid of it.. this is covered in the FAQ, well part of your question is .. about the profiles, NO you dont need NTFS to have user profiles and login accounts .. you wont be able to assign NTFS permision, but you can assign share level permisions with FAT32 .. really, use NTFS .. just my thoughts ..
-neural
 
Say you have a 20Gb drive and 10Gb drive. You load XP and everything else on the 20Gb drive and your 10Gb drive you use for backing up images or maybe MP3 storage. When you installed XP, you chose to use NTFS. If the 10Gb drive came from the FAT32 world will XP be able to read and use it?
 
> If the 10Gb drive came from the FAT32 world will XP be able to read and use it?

Yes, XP supports FAT/FAT32 just fine. It was NT4 which didn't support FAT32 which for awhile created two setups of non-interoperable disk structures (Fat32 on 98 couldn't be read by NT4 and NTFS on NT4 couldn't be read by 98).

Of course, if you have no further use for 9x/ME to hit that disk, you can convert the FAT32 to NTFS (the conversion does NOT lose data, so you can do it in place).

Bill
 
<< why do people want to run FAT32 >>

It seems most gamers prefer FAT32 because it's faster.


Are there any/many tools for Windows that won't work w/ NTFS? What about old DOS games?

Any problems copying information from a FAT drive to an NTFS drive?

Is NTFS less likely to develop lost clusters/files/chains, etc?
Periodically my HDD will hickup & Win98 will freeze, reboot fails (corrupted files/reg), requiring Win98 re-install, and I'll lose stuff that Scandisk thinks is lost and deletes or converts to all those .chk files or DIR... folders. Not sure if it's the OS, the HDD, or the file system.
 


<< Are there any/many tools for Windows that won't work w/ NTFS? >>



The latest versions of Ghost and Drive Image will work with NTFS partitions, but I don't think
they will work on such. So it is of benefit to have some space on a FAT32 paritition set aside
for utilities and backup.
 


<< << why do people want to run FAT32 >> >>



If using a RAID 0 config, FAT32 is reported to be 35 - 45% faster than NTFS (benchmarking, don't know about real world performance).
 


<< It seems most gamers prefer FAT32 because it's faster. >>


That's BS. There is no noticible difference. In many cases NTFS is faster. Besides when you're playing a game it's in RAM, so the hard drive has very little to do with it. That is unless you're paging to disk, and if that's happening you need more RAM.



<< What about old DOS games?
Any problems copying information from a FAT drive to an NTFS drive? >>


Read the FAQ Andy linked, also read this one as it talks about compatibility and OS'es.



<< Is NTFS less likely to develop lost clusters/files/chains, etc? >>


Yes. It's also explained int he FAQ Andy provided, if you would just read it. FAT32 is a very weak file system.

For anyone here that's running or plans to run NTFS I would suyggest you also look at the following FAQ and use a little preparation in case the worst comes. Hindsight may be 20/20, but it can be a real bitch sometimes.
How do I use Win2K/WinXP's Recovery Console to access all my files?
 


<< Read the FAQ Andy linked, also read this one as it talks about compatibility and OS'es. >>



I had asked those questions (DOS games, copying) before he posted that (2nd) FAQ. And while the 2nd FAQ says software and games work fine w/ NTFS, someone mentioned utilities like Ghost might not work on NTFS, so I was wondering more about problems such as that. And if they don't what's something similar that does?

Also the question about the lost clusters was because I wasn't exactly sure what that paragraph in the FAQ was saying.

BTW, did you mean to link to the same FAQ Andy did?

Thanks for the info.
 


<< BTW, did you mean to link to the same FAQ Andy did? >>


Yes that's the article I meant to link to, I just missed that post of his. I only saw the other the first time I scrolled thorugh this thread. Then again I see these NTFS vs. FAT threads so often, it's rare for me to pay close attention to was in them anyway. It'e the same story, same answers, different week.
 
Forgot to mention, I didn't think games like FS2002 would fit in the average amount of memory gamers have (say 256-512MB).

After reading the FAQ's (a little scared to ask):
Some of this is a WinXP feature/limitation rather than specific to NTFS.

-You can still boot with a floppy (FAT) to get a commant prompt to flash BIOS's (from the floppy), etc, right? A little more scary than flashing from the HDD...
-I boot w/ the WinXp CD to do the initial partition and Format to NTFS on a new HDD, right?
-If I use a 40GB drive, should I make it be one partition w/ 64KB clusters or two partitions w/ 32KB clusters?
-Should XP be alone on it's own partition?

BTW, this page says FAT32 is slightly faster.
And this says NTFS is more prone to get fragmented.

 
Slickone,

Don't be scared to ask questions. It's just that so many people seem to ask the same questions over and over again without browsing throught the FAQ section where most questions can be easily answered without wasting the valuable board space and the users' time. Since you have read the FAQ and still have questions, I think your questions warrant prompt responses. Here they are,

1. yes
2. yes
3. not sure about the cluster size as the xp installation doesn't ask you for the cluster size during the installation but I would go with anything other than just one partition
4. no, the partition can have other stuff besides the os
 
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