which is best NTFS or FAT32 ?

[ses]

OK i'am going to install windows xp home and need to now how to format the drive, should i install it NTFS or FAT32 which best :confused:

[lechumbl]

Hi Ses,

I would recommend FAT32.

If you plan to do an image, using PQDI or Norton Ghost, then FAT32 is what you want.

If you have no need for the added file system security of NTFS, stay away from it.

In all my testing, both here and at home, none of my 52 PCs have NTFS, and none will. This is on all OS's.

[jozzer]

I use NTFS.......the newest version of ghost works fine.......I'm not really sure how much difference there is performance wise, but features like hibernation work only under ntfs.......Seems to me XP like it better, but this is the only machine I have tried.....Lee has more experience on this one!

[mackerel]

I've tried both under Win2k. Not noticeable normally, but when decoding binaries in Outlook Express NTFS feels slower. But I have no hard numbers to back that up.

The other advantage for NTFS for me is you can selectively compress files. Ok, there's a performance hit but it saves space. I only do it to bits I know I use rarely on my notebook which has a tiny 10 GB disk.

[moonraker]

Both have pros and cons. It depends on what you want to use your system for. We use it at work because the security features give control over who writes what where, and avoids inadvertent overwriting of valuable files, for example, by the admin girl when she prints out CAD drawings for subcontractors.

I use it for the same reason at home. Junior logs in with his own profile and has no access to my files or parts of the file system that could cause any damage.

However, if you are happy with FAT32, have no need of the security feature, and/or plan to access the disk with another OS other than NT/2000/2000.5, then go with that.

[MrP]

hullo.

have just installed win2k on a new ahrd disk i got (WD 40GB) and the disk hadnt ben paritioned or anything so the only option i got was to use NTFS, i guess that for me to have the option to use FAT32, i would have had to use FDisk to partition it, or is there some other way to do it???

toodles :xsofa:

[moonraker]

Yes, bit of a 2k oddity that one. Win2k can only format FAT 32 partitions up to 32Gb. So to format a disk larger than that you would need to start the 98 install routine or boot from a floppy and use fdisk. Win 98 can create a maximum volume size of 127.53Gb. Or you could use linux or partition magic.
Once formatted, 2k will happily read a FAT32 partition bigger than 32Gb, it just won't format it for itself :(
Don't know about XP in this respect.

I suppose you could forat the 40Gb into two seperate 20Gb partitions and then combine under 2k back into a 40Gb volume. Bit perverse though.

Oh, just one esoteric thought. If you are into editing/recording videos, and consequently large files, FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4Gb.

[MrP]

bollox,

wish i had known that., i didnt really wanna use NTFS, but i guess i am stuck with it now unless i fancy reformatting and reinstalling everything :(

ho hum, such is life

toodles :xsofa:

[mackerel]

MrP, If you really don't want NTFS, and don't want to re-install, Partition Magic can do the conversion to FAT32.

[The Therion]

there's always a way MrP :)

[MrP]

:xhammer: there can be only one!!!!:xhammer:

[lechumbl]

Hi All,

Partition Magic will convert NTFS to FAT32, providing you have no compressed files.

If you do, you be "out of luck".

AND, if you image your drive, in hopes of restoring to FAT32, it will not let you also. Will only restore an EXACT image, (File system, etc.)

[Silversaver]

Hi,

Actually both were good depends on how you like them to function. Generally speaking, FAT 32 configuration beats NTFS in performace, but NTFS handles file usage and access better, thanks to the smaller cluster size. It really depends on how you use you computer for. Regular user will probably just using FAT32, unless you are running a file server then use NTFS. That is also why most of server use NTFS becasue it can access files faster than FAT32 configuration. (Server is different as PC).

[RaNGeR.GaV]

Well the thing I like about NTFS in my WinXP is that, with all the crashing my machine does, I don't have to scan-disk everytime I reboot!! Thats gotta be good!! :D

And of course the fact that with all that crashing the files themselves are a lot safer for damage.

(I think the first time i installed XP it was with FAT32, and it would scandisk, but since NTFS, it doesn't. I have maybe just done too much damage to my short term mem to be sure though :) )

[GenAye]

hmm so NTFS, will not make my computer less prone to crashes? And as a gamer I should have FAT32?

[moonraker]

If you are pushing the limits of overclocking no, NTFS or any other file system for that matter, will do nothing at all for you in terms of system stablility. In fact, if your overclocked system upsets NTFS you are in trouble <h4>BIG TIME!</H4>. I did this once with softFSB and completely screwed my installation of NT4. Only solution was format and re-install.
Like I said, if you don't need the extra features that NTFS brings to the party, stick with FAT32.

[KMS]

hiya,

as moon says each has pros and cons, so its really down to application but my advise would be to go NTFS, why?? - theres much more pros now for NTFS over FAT32 and many more becoming apparent as drive size increases :-

Speed:

NTFS and FAT32 are very similar in speed, but as the size of the disk increases, the gap widens. NTFS actually stores small files in the Master File Table (MFT), to increase performance. Rather than moving the heads to the beginning of the disk to read the MFT entry, and then to the middle or end of the disk to read the actual file, the heads simply move to the beginning of the disk, and read both at the same time. This can account for a considerable increase in speed when reading lots of small files. As drives are getting bigger the speed increase with NTFS will become more noticable. With smaller drives FAT has the edge just!

Journaling:

NTFS is a journaled file system, meaning that it keeps a journal of all changes made. If you lose power in the middle of writing some data, when the machine comes back up, it can roll back changes, according to its journal. This doesn't necessarily mean that you won't lose any data at all, but it means that if part of the MFT is corrupted, it can be fixed.

If the same thing were to happen to a FAT32 partition, and part of the FAT were corrupted, the partition would be unmountable (unreadable), and you would lose everything on the disk.

Security:

FAT32 offers no security whatsoever, whereas NTFS offers very good security. All files and directories can be secured with a great degree of granularity. You can specify who can read, write, list, and change files, read/write permissions, read/write attributes (read-only, etc.), and a few others. The thing to keep in mind here is...all of this security is easily circumventable with a Linux boot disk. Physical security is the most important security.

Data Streams:

Another feature of NTFS is something called "data streams." A data stream is a kind of "file within a file." Data can be separated into multiple streams, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is for compatibility with Mac's. Mac's use a "resource fork" to keep track of what application created a file, and therefore what application to open it with, among other things. When you put a Mac file onto an NTFS volume, the actual data from the file is put into a primary data stream, and the resource fork is put into an alternate data stream. This way you don't have to have extra files laying around just to keep track of the resource fork. And it's all transparent.

Compression:

A commonly-used feature of NTFS is file compression. Many people have the idea that compression is bad, because of the way most compression is done. In Windows 98, for example, if you compressed a drive, it would take everything on that drive, and put it into one big file, using a special driver to make it look like all the files were still separate. This saved a lot of space, because there was no more cluster slack, but it also meant that if any part of the file got corrupted, all your data was gone. NTFS compression is far better. It compresses each file individually, and is extremely efficient. It's so efficient, in fact, that you will sometimes see better performance from a compressed NTFS volume than an uncompressed volume. This is due to the fact that more data can be read in a given amount of time, and because the OS and modern cpu's are very efficient at decompressing it on the fly.

Hope that helps, :)

[GenAye]

so if you have a 10-20gb harddrive on a game machine, would you say fat32 has the edge, how big does a hard drive have to be for NTFS to have a great advantage?

[KMS]

hiya, not sure of the exact change over, found this though, think its a little dated but might answer your Q :)

The Diskeeper folks published some performance results. NTFS was fastest followed by FAT and then FAT32. The best cluster size was 4K. 512byte clusters (default for fat32) was worst. They found that a disk intensive task moved "from FAT-32 512-byte clusters to NTFS 4K-byte clusters makes the job run in one fifth the time!" Read More (http://is-it-true.org/nt/utips/utips154.shtml)

[GenAye]

If I wanted NTFS, should I let XP fdisk my hard drive to NTFS during the installation or should I do it myself before? And if I have to do it before, how do I?

[lechumbl]

Hi GenAye,


If you decide to go NTFS, might as well let XP do it.

It does it the same as you, but automatic.

[Longshot421]

I just installed XP last night on a new hard drive. I got the NTFS/FAT32 option, but I don't recall getting to select the partition size. What is the default, and I guess if I want to change it, I have to wipe and start again?

[lechumbl]

Hi Again Longshot421,

If I remember correctly, the default is what the drive size is, according to what you made C:\ drive in FDisk, assuming that you install to C:\ drive.

XP will use all of C:\ drive for the default drive.

[Longshot421]

Hi lechumbl,

Yes, that's what it did, prompted to use the whole hard drive by default, offering to change it if I wanted. About the cluster size, I don't remember being prompted for it. A guy I work with says that 512K means very efficient space usage, but slow, while 4096K cluster means faster, but wastes some space. I used chkdsk and it reports 4096K cluster, so that's coll, it's what I would have set it to anyway, but why did it never ask me what I wanted to set it to?

[lechumbl]

Hi Longshot421,

Microsoft, in it's infinite wisdom, assumes that it knows the best settings for YOUR system.

I would very much like to have that option for myself. But, also, you must remember, most of the users are not technically able to manipulate the settings and such, like us.
Microsoft assumes that, so............

Of course, if you break down the word "assume", you can see what it really means.

[Longshot421]

:D Ha! Exactly! Microsoft and it's God complex.

[GITster]

Originally posted by Longshot421
Hi lechumbl,

Yes, that's what it did, prompted to use the whole hard drive by default, offering to change it if I wanted. About the cluster size, I don't remember being prompted for it. A guy I work with says that 512K means very efficient space usage, but slow, while 4096K cluster means faster, but wastes some space. I used chkdsk and it reports 4096K cluster, so that's coll, it's what I would have set it to anyway, but why did it never ask me what I wanted to set it to?

it's actually the other way round: for any chunk of data, it must use up an integer number of clusters.

So say you have lots of small files, may be 2-3Kb in size, each file will take up 4Kb on the disk for a cluster size of 4K, the difference between the file size and cluster size is just left blank, but unuseable to other files. So if you had your cluster size set to 512K and your files are 2-3K, then your wasting A LOT of space, 510K ish for each file!

FAT systems can only address a certain maximum number of clusters, so for small drives the clusters can be small, but for large drives, the clusters must be made larger to fill up the space. IF you get what i'm saying :confused: I'm sure you can find a better explaination somewhere.

NTFS does not have this problem, if warks in a vastly different way.

[lechumbl]

Hi GITster,

Agree, a 2 or 3 meg file on a 512 cluster is a major waste of space.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the issue was not having the option to make the cluster size available to change.

XP does not ask you if you want to use 4, or 16, or 256, or 512, etc.

Would be nice to have the option.

We don't need a 4096 cluster for small files, for sure.

NTFS has advantages and disadvantages. I personally will not use NTFS on anything I own or operate. BUT, that is my choice, and many have NTFS, and love it. Kind of like "Dealer's Choice" in cards.

[7h3 J0k3R]

If you don't have other users using your computer the better choice is the fat32 fs. It has no secure but is faster.

If other people uses your computer I think you should use NTFS because you can set up security features. Permissions.

[BigBen]

Can you covert to NTFS from FAT32 without having to reformat etc?

Regards

[lechumbl]

Hi BigBen,

Yes you can convert from NTFS to FAT32.

You need a program called Partition Magic. It allows you to convert from one to the other without reformatting.

[speculative]

I just got Partition Magic the other day and made 4 FAT32 partitions for XP Pro. I thought it said though in the instructions that you couldn't convert back from NTFS if you converted from FAT32. I could be wrong, but just thought I'd mention that - you might want to check it out before converting.

-spec

[BigBen]

THX.....I have Partition Magic 7 I will dig it out and go check.


Regards

[BigBen]

Hi,
Partition magic does not work the option is blanked out :(......But I found this at www.tweakxp.com

To change from FAT 32 to NTFS for more stability and security, open the command prompt and type: "Convert C: /FS:NTFS". Make sure there is a space between the C: and the foward slash (/). Once you press enter it will ask you for confirmation and press Y. Then press Y and enter once more to reboot. It will take between one hour and 15 minutes to convert to NTFS. Now you can set passwords for files and use encryption. This also works for windows XP Home.


Regards

[lechumbl]

Hi Tony,

Thanx for the info.....very useful.