NTFS or FAT32??

[leoblob]

I may finally move on from "WIN9x land" and I'm trying to understand the pros and cons of NTFS vs FAT32. (This is not for my Thinkpads... I know they don't have enough horsepower.)

I read a thread on another board, where the posters got so mad at each other, the thing deteriorated into a shouting match (is this issue that controversial ...??!!) Also, I've been on the Microsoft site, and the materials there are a bit over my head.

NTFS supports bigger drives, but I'm going to be nowhere near FAT32's limits. NTFS has "better security" but I won't be on a network. I will first put my data on a temporarily installed hard drive, then wipe my "main" hard drive, intall the new OS (looks like it will be WIN2K), then copy my data from the temp drive back onto the "new" system... is this even possible if the temporary drive has FAT32, but the "new" boot drive is NTFS?

Any links or help appreciated!

[rjm1135]

Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong

NTFS has "better security" but I won't be on a network.

NTFS security applies to local files and folders - eg you can have two or more user accounts on the same machine and NTFS permissions applied to their personal folders can stop then from seeing each other's data - you can't do that with FAT32.

And you can freely copy between FAT32 and NTFS but when going from NTFS to FAT32 you lose the special features of NTFS (security, compression, encryption) because it's not supported on FAT32.

Cheers,
Rob.

[sugo]

I went with NTFS mostly because of unicode and journaling support.

[jdhurst]

I have never used FAT on an NT-based machine. Poor practice to do so. NTFS is more efficient, safer and more secure. Go with NTFS and you will have no reason to be disappointed. ... JD Hurst

[leoblob]

Thanks! Looks like it's NTFS.

[no_man]

whoa, slow down, based upon your 'older' hardware, FAT32 will be much faster processing than NTFS. NTFS works best on SATA type drives. You want speed, go with FAT32

[kaplanfx]

whoa, slow down, based upon your 'older' hardware, FAT32 will be much faster processing than NTFS. NTFS works best on SATA type drives. You want speed, go with FAT32

I think he said in the post that this question was not for his thinkpads.

-kaplanfx

[K. Eng]

SATA refers to the signalling protocol of the disk and not to the performance of the disk.

The RPM of the drive, cache size, and max sustainable transfer rate are better indicators of performance than whether the drive is SATA or ATA. Granted, most SATA drives are performance oriented and generally have better performance characteristics than ATA drives.

I prefer NTFS because of its security features and journaling.

whoa, slow down, based upon your 'older' hardware, FAT32 will be much faster processing than NTFS. NTFS works best on SATA type drives. You want speed, go with FAT32

[jdhurst]

NTFS works fine, and every bit as fast as FAT on a 500MHz machine. So unless the older machine is much slower than 500MHz, I would still select NTFS. It is made for NT machines. ... JD Hurst

[leoblob]

Right... my TP 365X is "maxed out" with WIN98SE. And the 360 will probably stay with DOS forever. (WIN2K will be going on a PIII 1200.)

I went with NTFS mostly because of unicode and journaling support.

Can you explain what these terms mean?

[bhtooefr]

Ah... Unicode...

Unicode is a newer way of storing data (than ASCII). It uses 16-bits to store a character, rather than 8. Therefore, it can hold international characters without doing weird things.

As for journalling, I'm a bit hazy on that, but it's basically a way for the filesystem to keep track of where it is, and what it's doing, so if there's a problem, it can recover a lot easier. Remember how if you don't properly shutdown a Win9x system, it makes you run ScanDisk? That's because the FAT filesystem isn't a journalling filesystem, and it needs to check the whole disk for damage. NTFS, on the other hand, knows EXACTLY where the damage could be - no more running ScanDisk (or chkdsk on an NT-based OS) every time you don't do a proper shutdown.

Another advantage of NTFS (although it's not unique to NTFS, but it's something FAT doesn't have) is that it's "file allocation tables" (they're not actually CALLED FATs, but they do the same thing) are scattered across the partition. FAT stores two copies of the FAT at the beginning of the partition. If there's damage in that area, on a FAT partition, most likely you've lost all of your data (without doing a LOT of work to reconstruct the FATs, which is nearly impossible). However, on an NTFS partition, it can be damaged in a certain area, and there's a bunch more "FAT"s in other places on the drive. So, NTFS is more reliable.

The ONLY problem I see with NTFS: compatibility. Only an NT (including 2000 and XP, of course) can natively read AND write an NTFS partition for free. There are pay-for drivers to get DOS and 9x reading and writing NTFS, and there's a program called "Captive NTFS" that allows Linux to use Microsoft's NTFS driver to read and write NTFS partitions, but that's not a native solution.

Still, seeing as I can't run Windows 2000/XP on an ext3 or Reiser FS, I'll run it on NTFS.

[no_man]

as I said, you want SPEED, stay with FAT. I do not need the overheads provided by Microsoft's proprietary features, especially when sharing files across the computer universe.

[Navck]

NTFS is also very resistant to fragmentation. Unless the MFT is fragmented.