From a tehnical perspective NTFS is superior. Even if you don't use the bonus featues, NTFS is better becuase it tends to get fragmented a lot less than FAT32, and due to it's design it's almost impossible that all the directory structures will get corrupted.

I've used NTFS almost the same amount of time as I've been using FAT32. With FAT32 on a few occassions something scrwed up with the FATs and I lost EVERYTHING on that disk. On NTFS I've never had any problems (except two disks which physically failed). From what I hear future MS operating systems are unlikely to function properly with FAT33, so it looks like FAT is being phased out. Go for the upgrade.

I'm sorry to be so lakonic for now, but since a new machine needs some work, let me just say thanks for your input for now. I'll come back to you with a more elaborate posting, promised. For now I have two small Fat32 (C: and swap:) and two bigger ntfs partitions.

New machines make tired users :)

cheers, micha