i've always been happy with fat 32 so never really bothered converting the drives to ntfs, i was just wondering are the speed differences noticeable, and are there any other benifits, thanks...

Absolutely.

NTFS = New Technology File System...what can it do?

It makes use of your hard drive by way of smaller clusters per track... that in turn reduces hard drive wasted space.

NTFS allows the hard drive to access programs faster.

As for security...fat has none. NTFS has alot.

Want to add a new hard drive to your existing machine, and have it think its extended from the original? No problem - simple volumes allow this in the NTFS. You can extend a hard drive to another and make it appear as one large drive.

There is alot more...but its late and I am sure many others will add to this :-)

NTFS is great and has a lot of nice features... however, if you machine crashes and you have to boot from a boot disk.... you screwed unless you've got that NTFSDOS program.. not part of the standard boot disk.

For what i need my computer for, just stick with FAT32, unless your running critical systems or over a large network where file level security is important.

FAT32 for compatablility.

what more can i say.

thanks for the replies guys, shall have a little more look into it now..

No Problem, glad to help.

If a system using NTFS does crash, it can be repaired using either the boot disks you made right after you installed the system, (The first thing one should ALWAYS do when installing an OS) or even easier by booting from the installation cd and allowing a repair.

NTFS in my opinion is a more powerfull and definately more stable way of managing files on a system :)

If I used Windows (XP) alone, I would also go along with NTFS. However because Linux doesn't have a complete driver for NTFS I'm stuck with using FAT32.

Several bootmanagers work better when installed on fat32

if standalone system, FAT32.....unless u need security protection against your family members accessing your important files or data....

otherwise, i would go with the guys on NTFS (although more hassle when system crashes) with the network environment.

Just wondering why you dont partition your hard drive and then dual boot?

I have convert all my partitions to NTFS and I really enjoy this :lol:

I think this is more stable and less fragment

A good document on NTFS versus FAT32.
No one is better than the other. No one is perfect.
They both fulfill different needs.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/index.htm



Last edited by oscar2043 at Jul 27 2002, 05:08 AM

it is glad that you said some good of NTFS as well. But you have been discourages switching to NTFS cos of a booting problem. Well for your info, booting from a floopy is not required at all for an average computer - not a computer that even can't detect the CDROM in BIOS.
The Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional CDs are bootable and you can boot from the CD.
The simplest thing to do when you can't boot in to Windows a usual, is to boot from the CD and repair. If repair doesn't work (mostly it doesn't) you need to reinstall Windows. That doesn't impact on your documents in Documents & Settings at all but it creates ugly looking ComputerName.All Users etc folders in the Documents. The only to get rid of this is to first got to command prompt via the CD and rename Documents and Settings to Backup or something and reinstall Windows. After you have installed Windows again you could move the documents of each user to their documents. I ain't hope no crashed at all for a computer running NTFS as the file system of the hard disk :)

NTFS is far better than FAT32 :)
Just read what's in the Help in Windows about NTFS and that's enough.
It makes the programs run faster and less fragments the HDD. In the Search, you can have the indexing service which enables you to search faster.
You can also let others preventing seeing your downloaded pictures or anything ;)
Windows XP is 'built' for a system with NTFS and that's I believe.

Hi,

I've tried and tested both NTFS and FAT32.

Rule of Thumb for me, only use NTFS if PC/FILE security is absolutely of paramount importance.

FAT32 for the novice or less experienced causes less problems if you get a problem.

Cheerz :) :D ;)



Last edited by daMANwithANSWERZ at Aug 3 2002, 09:37 AM

couple of questions: i have a dual-boot, with Win98SE on C partition, and WinXP on D partition.....if i convert my D to NTFS, will i still run into possible troubles if i have to boot from disk?

also, is it ok to convert my current WinXP FAT32 D partition to NTFS, or is it better to do it before installation?

i also have an E partition that only contains "Data" (ie. MP3,movies,etc.)...is there any positive/negative to converting that to NTFS?

Converting your E drive to NTFS would be a good idea. You can compress folders to save space, set permissions (if you need to) and have a slightly better access time.

You don't have to convert your WinXP setup during installation, just use a recent version of Partition Magic and convert from there. It's very fast and I've never run into a problem doing it.

Of course, it's always a good idea to back up important data in case you do come across any unforseen problems.

I think that it's a good idea to make your boot partition FAT32. Do what you like with the other partitions if you have them.

FAT32 is much easier to recover data from if that need arises, and it's definitely much easier to perform DOS antivirus work on it too.

Tools like ERD Commander 2002 are changing this though.

Epyx

NTFS all the way as it is a more robust FS. It is also more secure than f32

tks, for the link. learned a lot. wonder Windows XP have a NTFS version higher than 5 :o

@mcored

5.1

if you got a TV Card, you may be recording uncompressed AVI files which will take up more than 4GB size files. MS recommends NTFS as the file system for this purpose, cos FAT32 supports only upto 4GB single file size. if this exceeds, you get file system errors, such as you will not be able to delete the file. this doesn't mean, it happens always, but it may.