FAT32 or NTFS?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Smith
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Paul Smith

Sammy D said:
I use XP.

I want to create a data partition on a new hard drive of approx 50
to 100 GB and I want to store only data in it (jpegs, mpegs, mp3s).

Is it better to have it as FAT32 or NTFS? I want resilience,
recovery, ease of repair, and that sort of thing.
Click to expand...

NTFS. 8-)

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
http://windows.dasmirnov.net/ Windows XP Resource Site.
http://www.smirnov.demon.co.uk/
http://www.doom3portal.com/ A Doom 3 fansite.

*Replace nospam with smirnov to reply by e-mail*
 
I use XP.

I want to create a data partition on a new hard drive of approx 50
to 100 GB and I want to store only data in it (jpegs, mpegs, mp3s).

Is it better to have it as FAT32 or NTFS? I want resilience,
recovery, ease of repair, and that sort of thing.
 
I like NTFS. Among its qualities, it is a journaling file system, which fits
your needs nicely. Do some googling on that and read up.

--Dan
 
I use XP.

I want to create a data partition on a new hard drive of approx 50
to 100 GB and I want to store only data in it (jpegs, mpegs, mp3s).

Is it better to have it as FAT32 or NTFS? I want resilience,
recovery, ease of repair, and that sort of thing.
Click to expand...

Since you only wish to store jpegs, mpegs, and mp3s on this drive,
cluster size is not a factor and should not matter. I would format
the entire drive to FAT-32 (although I'm sure there will be lots of
disagreement on this). One caveat here that would suggest otherwise
is if you intend to create very large files (exceeding around 4gb)
THEN it is necessary to use NTFS as FAT-32 will only support a file
size of around 4.2gb.

My reason for suggesting this is the ease of recovery for FAT-32
versus NTFS. You can always boot your machine with a simple Win98 EBD
or Win98 DOS disk and extract all your data from that drive without
ever having to go into the OS. But it's your decision. What the
other replies have stated should certainly be taken into account.
 
A consideration for you: WinXP cannot create or format a FAT32 partition
larger than 32GB. To use FAT32 for a partition of the size you are thinking,
you will need to use a third-party tool.

Personally, unless you are dual booting a Win9x system, I would go with
NTFS, as the file system is more resilient.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
CS said:
My reason for suggesting this is the ease of recovery for FAT-32
versus NTFS. You can always boot your machine with a simple Win98 EBD
or Win98 DOS disk and extract all your data from that drive without
ever having to go into the OS.
Click to expand...

That's not recovery. Besides, you lose all LFNs.

Recovery of corrupt volumes is more likely with NTFS.
 
Greetings --

Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is an
option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, and a lot of wasted hard drive space
on volumes larger than 8 Gb in size. But your computing needs may
vary, and there is no hard and fast answer.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by Alex Nichol in the
article here:

FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfs.htm

Somewhat more technical information is here:

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314463

Choosing Between File Systems
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

NTFS file system
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/


Bruce Chambers

--
Help us help you:




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having both at once. -- RAH
 
Sammy D said:
I use XP.
Click to expand...
I want to create a data partition on a new hard drive of approx 50
to 100 GB and I want to store only data in it (jpegs, mpegs, mp3s).
Click to expand...
Is it better to have it as FAT32 or NTFS? I want resilience,
recovery, ease of repair, and that sort of thing.
Click to expand...

You dont say what you plan to do about backups.

While in theory NTFS is more robust, in practice there
is bugger all in it with the real world of hard drive failure.

If you dont backup everything, and arent prepared to pay
for file recovery if you do lose the drive, there are a lot more
decent free recovery tools around for FAT32 than NTFS.

If you do backup religiously there isnt much advantage in NTFS.
 
Sammy said:
I use XP.

I want to create a data partition on a new hard drive of approx 50
to 100 GB and I want to store only data in it (jpegs, mpegs, mp3s).

Is it better to have it as FAT32 or NTFS? I want resilience,
recovery, ease of repair, and that sort of thing.
Click to expand...

FAT32. Anybody who suggests otherwise for the specific requirements you
requested has no experience whatsoever reparing PCs or getting data off
them in case of a OS crash.
 
Bruce said:
capabilities, no fault tolerance, and a lot of wasted hard drive space
on volumes larger than 8 Gb in size. But your computing needs may
Click to expand...

Not an issue with large files as mp3s and videos and such.
 
Sammy said:
I use XP.

I want to create a data partition on a new hard drive of approx 50
to 100 GB and I want to store only data in it (jpegs, mpegs, mp3s).

Is it better to have it as FAT32 or NTFS? I want resilience,
recovery, ease of repair, and that sort of thing.
Click to expand...

Having recovered data from both I'd go NTFS. Sure, you can't read it from
DOS, but so what? It's a data disk, not a system disk. You aren't going
to be trying to tweak it to get the system up after a crash.

I've been running NTFS for years and see no reason whatsoever to go with
FAT32 unless you have a specific need to read the data from Windows 9X.
 
While in theory NTFS is more robust, in practice there
is bugger all in it with the real world of hard drive failure.

If you dont backup everything, and arent prepared to pay
for file recovery if you do lose the drive, there are a lot more
decent free recovery tools around for FAT32 than NTFS.
Click to expand...


You only need one NTFS recovery tool, findntfs. FAT recovery depends on
regular defrags, NTFS does not.
 
While in theory NTFS is more robust, in practice there
is bugger all in it with the real world of hard drive failure.

If you dont backup everything, and arent prepared to pay
for file recovery if you do lose the drive, there are a lot more
decent free recovery tools around for FAT32 than NTFS.
Click to expand...


You only need one NTFS recovery tool, findntfs. FAT recovery depends on
regular defrags, NTFS does not.
 
Having recovered data from both I'd go NTFS. Sure, you can't read it from
DOS, but so what? It's a data disk, not a system disk. You aren't going
to be trying to tweak it to get the system up after a crash.
Click to expand...
I've been running NTFS for years and see no reason whatsoever to go with
FAT32 unless you have a specific need to read the data from Windows 9X.
Click to expand...

Can you recommend free utilities to gain access to NTFS partitions
from outside the operating system.


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
FAT32. Anybody who suggests otherwise for the specific requirements you
requested has no experience whatsoever reparing PCs or getting data off
them in case of a OS crash.
Click to expand...

I've lost more data to FAT32 corrupting itself then I
have NTFS corrupting itself. FAT32 has *no* redundancy
of the directory information about the disk.

Only reason to use FAT32 is if you have to share the
disk with older Windows OS's (Win95/98/ME) or possibly
Macs.
 
FAT32. Anybody who suggests otherwise for the specific requirements you
requested has no experience whatsoever reparing PCs or getting data off
them in case of a OS crash.
Click to expand...

Get a removeable drive bay ($10 from Directron)

http://www.directron.com/kf201.html

(other models available)

with a disk half the size of your main disk. Use it to create disaster
recovery archive (carbon-copy) with Ghost or Drive Image Pro. The
speed of this operation depends on the options you select. I manage
about 10 GB / hour with all the overhead I impose. Every three months
I include a bad sector check which doubles the time.

If you split your main HD into two equal-size partitions and
additionally carbon-copy the main partition to the second partition,
you will have two archives, one in a removable disk you can store
somewhere safe and another one online. The second partition is handy
for quick fixes if you screw something up on the main disk, like
deleting a file or whatever.

After making the carbon-copies, close as many background utilities as
you can so files are not locked. Then spawn a DVM console window and
run

attrib -a *.* /s /d

This should clear the archive bits on most files across the entire
filesystem, setting things up for a differential backup.

Then run the Backup utility that comes with Windows to do a
differential backup each midnight (or use one you like instead). The
best plan would be to put a small disk in the removable bay and do the
differential backup to it. That way you have your daily backup on a
different drive in case the main drive goes out. Extra trays are $7
from Directron. I use an old 4 GB drive which is still quite
servicable - for differential backups it is just fine.

If you do incremental backups of large files which change daily, the
backup file will grow huge fast and recovery can be slow. Differential
backups backup everything that has been changed since you last cleared
the archive bits.

Differential backup does not clear the archive bit, so once a file has
been marked as archive because it was changed, the differential backup
will back it up until the archive bit is cleared by you. You can also
exclude certain files or directories that you do not want to be backed
up each night.

FWIW,


--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
FAT32 has *no* redundancy
of the directory information about the disk.
Click to expand...

I thought FAT filesystems kept two copies of the directory and the
file allocation table. But then maybe that was FAT16.

--

Map Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:
http://www.freewebs.com/vrwc/

"You can all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."
--David Crockett
 
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